Thelma Wiltshire applies a ‘telling' and ‘suggesting' strategy to an enquiry involving an historical site. Getting beyond more simplistic approaches to ‘fact' and ‘opinion', she describes how a pack of curriculum materials was designed to give pupils a precise language to talk about layers of certainty and uncertainty in their work of comprehension, selection, inference and deduction. The content that she and her colleagues chose was ambitious, in that it ranged across historical periods and involved complex source material. The strategy, however, helped all pupils to achieve new understanding. In this approach, Thelma uses a lot of ‘modelling' of language use, followed by a structured opportunity for pupils to produce the language themselves.