Teaching Secondary Social Studies
Transform secondary social studies from passive memorization into active, evidence-driven inquiry. Learn to structure compelling historical investigations, facilitate rigorous civic discourse, and integrate geography, economics, and history into authentic classroom assessments.
Like Duolingo, but for Teaching Secondary Social Studies. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
22 levels across 3 sections, about 44 minutes end to end, roughly 9 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Sparking Disciplinary Inquiry, Navigating Deliberation and Multiple Narratives, and Curriculum Architecture and Authentic Assessment. It assumes you already know the basics.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Teaching Secondary Social Studies
- Compelling questions address unresolved historical debates rather than factual consensus
- A strong inquiry prompt lacks a single definitive answer discoverable via a search engine
- Open queries require students to weigh competing values, interpretations, and evidence
- Supporting questions build foundational geographical and chronological context first
- Intermediate supporting questions trace institutional and legal changes across time
- Advanced supporting questions introduce divergent disciplinary and human perspectives
- Juxtaposing contradictory primary evidence creates productive cognitive conflict
- Staging an inquiry hook challenges prior assumptions before introducing content
- Discrepant artifacts prompt students to formulate their own explanatory questions
- Framing around human agency highlights personal moral stakes over abstract policy
- Focusing on individual decisions exposes the real costs of state actions
- Agency-centered prompts help secondary students evaluate historical empathy
- The Question Formulation Technique explicitly transfers question generation to learners
- Sorting and refining peer queries forces students to judge investigability themselves
- Providing pre-packaged question lists keeps the cognitive framing work with the teacher
- Sourcing trains students to check author and publication date before reading text
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Teaching Secondary Social Studies the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What is a hallmark of a strong inquiry prompt in social studies?
Get it right to open this lesson and 21 more in the app.
Where Teaching Secondary Social Studies takes you
- 1
Sparking Disciplinary Inquiry
- Framing Compelling Questions
- Reading Primary Sources Like a Historian
- Integrating Spatial and Economic Lenses
- 2
Navigating Deliberation and Multiple Narratives
- Facilitating Deliberative Civic Discussions
- Unpacking Historiography and Contested Narratives
- 3
Curriculum Architecture and Authentic Assessment
- Designing Units with the C3 Inquiry Arc
- Assessing Historical Argumentation and Civic Action
3 sections · 7 units · 22 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
Teaching Secondary Social Studies is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
More History on Tomo
Teaching Secondary Civics and US History
Transform secondary social studies classrooms into dynamic laboratories of historical inquiry and civic deliberation. Designed for advanced educators, this course explores disciplinary literacy, contentious constitutional analysis, and authentic civic action.
How to Think Like a Historian
Move beyond memorizing dates and discover how historical knowledge is actually constructed. Learn to interrogate biased sources, read between the archival lines, and weigh competing interpretations to uncover the past with critical rigor.
Thinking Like a Historian
Learn how to read past events critically, dismantle common myths, and investigate the evidence behind historical claims. Master the tools historians use to separate fact from propaganda, uncover missing voices, and understand why the world became what it is today.
Thinking Like a Historian
Stop accepting historical narratives at face value and learn to interrogate the past like an investigator. Discover how to cross-examine conflicting eyewitnesses, decode hidden biases in official records, and interpret historical decisions within their own era's worldview.
Thinking Like a Historian
Transform how you see the past from a list of memorized dates into an active detective case. Learn how to interrogate old clues, spot hidden biases, and uncover why major events really happened.
How to Read History
Learn to look past myths, propaganda, and hindsight to understand what really happened in the past. Discover how historians interrogate conflicting evidence, reconstruct lost worldviews, and explain complex events. Walk away with the critical tools to evaluate any historical claim you encounter in books, news, or culture.
Start Teaching Secondary Social Studies today.
Download Tomo, search Teaching Secondary Social Studies, and play your first lesson in under a minute.