When the sticker craze started a few years ago, I knew I wanted to jump on the train as soon as possible. However, I have only worked in Responsive Classroom or Love and Logic schools that deemphasize extrinsic awards (and I agree!). The Responsive Classroom approach emphasizes fostering intrinsic motivation in students over the use of extrinsic rewards. My goal as a teacher is to cultivate a positive classroom community where students are motivated by the satisfaction of learning, developing meaningful relationships, and contributing to their environment rather than relying on external incentives like prizes or rewards. So, I set out on a mission to incorporate these stickers in a way that aligned with my priorities. That’s when I decided to make them success stickers! Every week, my students share a success with me – it can be big, it can be small, it can be in school, or it can be out. Then, they pick out a sticker as a physical reminder that they can do hard things AND celebrate successes loudly and proudly!

How To Build Student Connections with Success Stickers

I’ve been using success stickers for a few years, and they have quickly become one of my favorite traditions. It is so important to build student connections and relationships in a variety of ways. Success stickers are a natural extension that fit nicely into our morning routines and even morning meetings themselves. 

How To Manage Your Success Stickers

When can students share? Students can share their success with me at the beginning of our day, the end of our day, or during specific transition times. If you greet your students in the morning with a high five, handshake, etc., that is a beautiful time to have them share their success. Then they can pop into the classroom and grab a sticker to start the day. 

If students want to share in the middle of a lesson or another not-so-great time, I’ll remind them about the next good time to share it with me. Then I do my best to proactively visit that student later to ask about the success. 

How do you keep track of who is sharing? My goal is for every student to share once a week, but I don’t keep track. My students are pretty good about sharing weekly though. 

How long are these conversations? The conversations are typically pretty quick but my students also know if there’s already a big line of students waiting to share, then we will need to split that up for another time. I usually just tell them who I’m going to stop with during that period and suggest a different time when we’ll start again. 

Where do kids put their success stickers? I don’t provide any specific instructions for where the success stickers go. Some students put them on their notebook for our class. Others have a water bottle that is covered in stickers by the end of the year. A few of my students also give their success stickers away to friends or siblings as an act of kindness. I have seen some stickers buy water bottles for students at the beginning of the year, and those become their success sticker bottles all year long!

What Makes a Success?

These successes can be almost anything. They can be big or small. They can be something from school or something from home. 

We talk a lot at the beginning of the year about what is a success and what does that mean. For example, a success isn’t just something the student is excited about, but an area where they accomplished something or made growth. It’s hard for some students to do initially because it can be uncomfortable to feel like they’re bragging. Instead, we focus on how a success is being proud of something they did really well or a growth they made.

This Moving Mountains resource with the picture book Maybe walks students through identifying successes and is a great resource to use at the beginning of the year. This set of lessons about potential will help kids to understand their strengths, recognize success, and learn about their own endless potential.

Why Success Stickers Work

I have learned so much about my students, and that is the motivator for me to continue with success stickers. They get so excited to tell me a success, and I love watching them grow and learning so much about them. 

This tradition has also made it into several observation reflections for my principals, who noted that class ended with a line of students who wanted to come and share with me. THAT is my goal! The stickers are fun, but my ultimate goal is for students to feel comfortable to talk to me about their successes AND anything else that they want talk about. Our success sticker tradition opens up that door. 

Where To Buy Success Stickers

I collect interest surveys from students and parents at the beginning of the year. Sometimes those interests align well with stickers! For example, last year my students were really into video games, so I found Pokémon and Mario sets. Sports are also a popular theme. Cute animals are always a winner.

Buy Success Stickers

I usually buy stickers on Amazon (affiliate link) for around 4-5 cents per sticker. The sticker packs usually have a few stickers that you can’t put out for various reasons, so I do look through them as I add stickers to our shelf. Overall, this is a really affordable tradition and the only tangible incentive I do. I also collect stickers over the years so each individual pack lasts a long time.

I NEED ThESE!

More Reward and Incentive Ideas

You can visit these posts on Instagram to learn more about our success stickers!

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• Post 2
• Post 3

If you’re looking for other inexpensive reward options, this post has more inexpensive whole-class reward ideas and this post talks more about rewards in general.