Blank Sticker / Label Sheets

Six presets, or your own grid

Round cells or rectangular, in layouts sized to the common label-sheet arrangements: twenty-four small rounds, twelve larger ones, twenty praise stickers, ten rectangular labels, six name tags, or twelve blanks. Set columns and rows yourself if none of those fits.

Each cell takes a few centred lines of text — a praise phrase, a name, a classroom reward — or nothing at all.

Plain paper or actual label stock

Both work. They are different jobs.

On ordinary paper these are cut-out tokens. Glue one into a book, pin one to a display, hand one over. On adhesive label stock they become real stickers, which is what you want for anything destined for a jumper.

If you are printing onto branded label sheets, do not trust the preset to line up. Print one on plain paper first, hold it over the label sheet against a window, and check before running twenty through the printer.

Say what was done, not what the child is

A sticker can teach something. Or it can just be pleasant.

"You showed your working" or "you kept going when it got hard" names a behaviour the child can repeat. "Clever girl" names a trait, and the research on this is reasonably consistent: praising the fixed quality makes children more cautious about attempting things they might fail at, because failure then threatens the label.

The blank presets exist for exactly this. Writing the specific thing by hand takes ten seconds and is worth more than any pre-printed phrase.

Keep them scarce

A sticker given for everything is a sticker given for nothing. If every child has twelve by Wednesday they have stopped meaning anything at all, and you have built yourself an economy that now has to be maintained.

Give fewer than feels natural. The ones that land are the unexpected ones.

Where they get used

Marking books, reward charts, behaviour systems, reading records. Outside school entirely too: chore charts, potty training, the dentist, swimming lessons, anything at all where a small child benefits from a visible record that something went well.

Print on card if they are being handled, and remember that a cut-out circle on plain paper survives a school bag rather better than a thin sticker does.

Related

For redeemable rewards rather than markers, the reward coupons and brag tags. For a card filled in over time, the punch cards.