After reflecting on the difference between his study of source extracts at university and how he was using source extracts in the classroom, Jonathan Sellin went in search of a new way to help his pupils to situate sources in context. Finding inspiration in the work of intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, Sellin decided to show his Year 9 pupils that the meaning of words is fluid. After reading cabinet memos and opinion polls from the 1930s, Year 9 pupils explored the different meanings that Neville Chamberlain and his contemporaries ascribed to the idea of 'appeasement'. Sellin argues that examining differences between authorial intent and the contemporary reception of a text has the potential to encourage sophisticated evidential thinking.