In order to make progress in the design of teaching methods that are able to provoke, support and measure high level historical reasoning, it is necessary to know more about important components, modes and specific problems of historical reasoning. In this paper we present a model with six related components of historical reasoning. This model is based upon a review of literature about historical reasoning and results of an expert-novice study that we conducted to get more insight in processes and difficulties of historical reasoning. We discern six components of historical reasoning 1) the asking of historical questions 2) contextualisation 3) putting forward claims and supporting them with arguments 4) the use of sources 5) the organisation of information to describe processes of change and explain or compare historical phenomena and 6) the use of (substantive and methodological) historical concepts. In this paper we focus on contextualisation.