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The Good Behavior Game played by a group of first grade students in Baltimore had a
special audience in early February. First Lady Laura Bush watched the children play the
game as they worked on a reading assignment, and she praised it, drawing national
attention to this effective classroom management tool.
The Good Behavior Game keeps the students’ disruptive and even violent behaviors in
check right up into adolescence. Researchers at the University of Southern Florida College
of Public Health have worked on this program for over ten years, and found the game
reduced aggressive behavior and kept children on task, especially boys who came into first
grade labeled as aggressive students.
The Good Behavior Game works by having fellow students motivate their teammates to follow
class rules. They are rewarded with various incentives; extra time at recess, or verbal
praise from the teacher. This way, researchers pointed out, it is the student’s peers
who are reinforcing the desired behavior. Researchers at the University of Southern
Florida also found that the intervention was effective over the long term for the highest
risk boys. The experiment was unique, because it was developed in conjunction with
Baltimore schools and communities. The Good Behavior Game demonstrates the long-term
benefit of an intervention started as early as first grade, and that when high-risk
children remain part of the classroom community, and are not outcasts, it helps them to
better integrate into the community.
The University of Southern Florida team is developing ways of evaluating other
community-based prevention programs. The Prevention Science and Methodology Group (PSMG)
researchers are looking at school-based drug prevention programs in rural communities, and
testing ways to reduce the rate of young peoples’ suicides. The University of
Southern Florida’s results-oriented population-based research looks to promote health
and reduce disease in Florida, and in the global community. Researcher hope to achieve
this by targeting a wide range of groups and influencing behavior toward healthy choices.
Visit our bookshop for tools to help the
children you work with.
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