In this article, Mannak, Huijgen and Tuithof share their experience of using Virtual Reality to promote historical contextualisation of the Berlin Blitz with their 13–15 year old students. They outline some strategies for using VR well in the classroom, and ways to avoid potential pitfalls. They then introduce a pedagogical framework for improving students’ ability to put this event into historical context using VR. They share their students’ experiences of it, and consider how their feelings of being ‘there’ brought something different to their learning, beyond what was brought by more traditional visual and written sources...