In this work, we present a teaching proposal about history of matrices. Our goal is to create conflictive situations in which students are encouraged to reflect upon their metadiscursive rules related to matrices, comparing them with those present in some historical writings. We have been based in the historical interpretation of Frédéric Brechenmacher and in Sfard’s theory of Thinking as Communicating. The conceptual framework for using history in the teaching of mathematics was inspired by some works of Tinne Hoff Kjeldsen. We elaborated two teaching modules approaching two episodes of the history of matrices; the first has as protagonist the mathematician J. J. Sylvester and the second one has A. Cayley as protagonist. We discuss some of the results obtained in a pilot study in which the material was tested.