Free printable

Printable Leitner box labels and a 16-day timetable

Cut out the six labels and stick one on each box or envelope: Boxes 1 to 5 and a done pile. Every new card starts in Box 1. A card you answer right moves up one box, and a card you miss goes back to Box 1. The second page is the 16-day timetable: Box 1 every day, the higher boxes less often, so the cards you know come round rarely.

Last updated 26 October 2026 · Written and checked by the GCSEwiz team

What is on the sheet

Six labels to cut out: Boxes 1 to 5 and a done pile
The rules for moving a card up or back, on the same page
A 16-day timetable of which boxes to test, with space to date each day

2 sheets · A4 portrait · black and white

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Leitner box labels

Page 1 of 2

Cut out each label and stick it on a box, an envelope or the band round a pile of cards.

Box 1

Test every day. New cards start here, and so does every card you miss.

Box 2

Test every second day: Days 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16.

Box 3

Test every fourth day: Days 1, 5, 9 and 13.

Box 4

Test every eighth day: Days 3 and 11.

Box 5

Test every sixteenth day: Day 7.

Done for now

Right in Box 5. These come out again for your last run-through before the exam.

Moving the cards

When you	The card
Answer it right	Moves up one box
Miss it, or only half know it	Goes back to Box 1, whichever box it was in
Answer it right in Box 5	Goes on the done pile until your last run-through
Make a new card	Starts in Box 1. Add ten new cards a day at most

Answer every card out loud or on paper before you turn it over, and mark yourself strictly: an answer missing a key word counts as missed.

16-day Leitner timetable

Page 2 of 2

Test the boxes on the day’s row, then date it. After Day 16, start again at Day 1.

Subject

Day 1 is

Day	Boxes to test	Date	Done
Day 1	Box 1 and Box 3
Day 2	Box 1 and Box 2
Day 3	Box 1 and Box 4
Day 4	Box 1 and Box 2
Day 5	Box 1 and Box 3
Day 6	Box 1 and Box 2
Day 7	Box 1 and Box 5
Day 8	Box 1 and Box 2
Day 9	Box 1 and Box 3
Day 10	Box 1 and Box 2
Day 11	Box 1 and Box 4
Day 12	Box 1 and Box 2
Day 13	Box 1 and Box 3
Day 14	Box 1 and Box 2
Day 15	Box 1
Day 16	Box 1 and Box 2

Missed a day? Do that day’s boxes today and carry on from there. The timetable moves along by a day, and nothing is lost.

Setting up the boxes

Five shoeboxes work, and so do five envelopes, five sandwich bags or five piles held together with elastic bands. Stick a label on each, and a sixth on whatever holds the cards you have finished with for now.

Put every card in Box 1, pick the day you will start, and write its date at the top of the timetable as Day 1. Early on, Box 1 is the busy one. The higher boxes fill up as you learn the cards.

Running a session

Every session follows the same steps:

Take out the boxes on today’s row of the timetable.
Shuffle each box, then answer every card before you turn it over.
Move the cards you got right up one box, and put the ones you missed back in Box 1.
Date the row, put the boxes away, and add up to ten new cards to Box 1.

Why 16 days?

Each box is tested half as often as the one before it: every day, every second day, every fourth, every eighth and every sixteenth. Sixteen days is the shortest timetable that fits all five, and spreading the boxes across it means no day asks for more than two boxes.

A card you answer right every time still takes up to a month to work its way from Box 1 to the done pile, and a card you miss takes longer. That is why it pays to start six to eight weeks before your first exam: the cards you make early get time to come round several times.

The last run-through

In the week before an exam, take the done pile out and go through it once with everything else. Those cards have not been checked since they left Box 5, so this is your chance to catch any that have slipped. Any you miss go back into Box 1 for the days that are left.

Box 1, filled for you

Writing the cards is the slow part of the Leitner system. GCSEwiz has free flashcards for every topic in Maths, English Language, English Literature and the sciences, each with a question on the front and the key points on the back. Print a topic four cards to a sheet, cut along the lines, and they go straight into Box 1.

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