You may have noticed something a little different on your First Five over the last few days.
If you’ve been running your morning routine using the First Five and spotted some small colored buttons at the top of each activity, you’re not seeing things. We’ve been quietly rolling out a new set of icons, and we want to walk you through what they do and how they make your First Five more useful in the classroom.
A quick note before we dig in: everything here is in beta. We’re putting it in your hands first because you’re the ones who will tell us what works, what’s confusing, and what needs another pass.
The Icon Bar
Each activity now has a small row of icons sitting at the top. They’re tools, not decoration. Tap one and something happens on the activity itself, right where you and your students are already looking.
Here’s the rundown.
Name Picker (teal)
Pull a random student name when you need a voice in the room. Set up your class list once and let the icon do the choosing. No more “whose turn is it?” gymnastics.
Draw (lime)
Opens a quick drawing space right on the activity. Try it on the Check-In: call a student’s name and write their initials where they are on the scale. Quick, visible, and easy to come back to as you move around the room.
Randomizers (indigo)
Spin up a random number, pick a category, or pull a quick choice when you need to move things along.
Try This (coral)
Activity-specific tips that appear when you tap. Think of it as a quick coaching whisper for that particular prompt. Not every activity has one, but where it appears, it’s there to help you stretch the moment.
Crown (gold)
A heads up on Crown and Streaks: right now both are tracked through your browser cookies, not your login. That means streaks live on the device you use. In the future, we’ll be moving this over to your logged-in account so your streak follows you wherever you sign in, and nothing gets lost in the transition.
Spanish Flip (purple), coming this Fall
You’ll see the Spanish Flip icon on activities now, but it isn’t active yet. This Fall we’re launching full 1-to-1 Spanish pairing across every activity type, so a single tap will flip the whole thing into Spanish. We’re putting the icon in place now so you know it’s coming. Stay tuned.
Swap It Out (green)
Don’t love today’s image, song, or video? Tap Swap to pull a different one from our archive of past Primary or Secondary First Fives. Same activity type, different content. Use it when something didn’t quite land, or when you want fresh material for the same kind of conversation.
One thing to know: Spanish Flip and Swap It Out are intentionally hidden on the Video and Brain Game activities. Those work differently, and the swap behavior didn’t make sense for them.
Skills
You’ll also see a green row of skills on most activities. These tag the social, emotional, and academic skills the activity is practicing. Active listening, perspective taking, self-regulation, curiosity, and so on.
The skills row is meant to make the “why” of each First Five visible at a glance. If you’re documenting your work for an instructional coach, an administrator, or your own planning, the skills tags give you language to point at. You’ll also see a gold Character Traits row that surfaces the deeper dispositions we’re building toward over time.
Beta Means We Want to Hear From You
All of this is live, and all of it is still being shaped. If something looks off, if an icon doesn’t behave the way you expect, or if you have an idea for what should be in the bar next, we want to know.
You’ve been the reason First Five works the way it does. Thanks for being our co-builders on this next chapter.
-Doug Overton & Edtomorrow Team