Free printable token board template

How to use it

Put the thing the child is working for in the box at the top before you start, and agree it with them rather than announcing it. Then hand over a token each time the target behavior happens, say what it was for as you do it, and stop. When the spaces are full, it is time for the agreed reward.

Immediately is the part that gets lost. A token board is not a record kept during the day and cashed in later; the delay between the behavior and the token is the variable that decides whether any of this teaches anything. If you are marking it at the end of a session you have built a chart, which is a different and slower tool.

One target, and a picture of the thing

This board has one target and a choice of one to ten token spaces. If you want to work on two things, print two boards. A sheet with five targets on it and one reward at the bottom never says whether the reward arrives when a row fills or when the whole page does, and a child cannot work towards an answer nobody has given.

The box is for a picture rather than a word, and that's the part most versions of this sheet get wrong. Choose a reward picture in the customizer, or print a blank board and attach a familiar photo. The circles along the bottom are matching tokens to cut out, not reward cards. The child this board is for often can't read, and the thing they're working for is the one element on the page that has to mean something to them without an adult reading it out.

The target names something to do rather than something to stop, which is the rule for anything you write in yourself. There is nothing on this sheet a child can fail, and no token comes back off once it is given. Response cost is a different technique and this is deliberately not a sheet for it.

Print two to a sheet if you want a board for the bag as well as one for the wall, and laminate it if it is going to live on a desk. The tokens along the foot are meant to be cut out; a dab of hook-and-loop tape under each slot is the version that survives a term.

What the tokens buy

Something small, soon, and genuinely wanted by this child rather than by children in general. Two minutes on a swing, a turn with the thing they keep looking at, choosing the next activity. The size of the reward matters much less than how quickly it arrives and how reliably it does.

If a child isn't working for it, the board isn't broken and neither are they. Either the reinforcer is wrong or the target is too hard for five repetitions. Change one of those, not both at once.

Fading it

The board is scaffolding, and it's supposed to come down. The usual path is to thin the schedule rather than to stop: a token for every second instance, then every third, then for a stretch of time rather than a count, then a board that stays in a drawer for the hard days. A board that is still doing exactly the same job six months in is a board nobody has planned an exit from. Worth noticing early.

What this is not

A printable is a sheet of paper, not a program. If you are running a token economy as part of a behavior plan, the target, the schedule and the fading criteria come from the person writing that plan, and this is simply a board with your palette on it instead of theirs. Everything above is the ordinary practice around the format, not advice about a particular child.

Or let Dozumo do it

Dozumo is a routine app for children at home, and the mechanism underneath it is this one: a small immediate thing earned for a specific behavior, traded later for something the child chose. It's a token economy with a creature on top of it.

The difference paper cannot close is the delay. The app gives the token at the moment the thing happens, every time, without an adult having to be in the room with a jar of counters. Nothing is ever taken away, and there's no record of a bad day to look back at.

It's built for families rather than classrooms, so the home half is what it covers. Join the waitlist and we'll tell you when it opens.

Or print one as it comes

The same board with each of the four creatures on it, already made. Pick one if you would rather not build anything.

• Mozumo
• Flazumo
• Pezumo
• Unizumo

Free to share

Free to print and share at home, in classrooms and in therapy practices. If you share it online, please link to this page: dozumo.com/printables/token-board

Common questions