The effects of a good behavior game on the disruptive behavior of Sundanese elementary school students.

Researchers ran a simple team game in a Sudanese second-grade class.

They split the kids into two teams and gave local trinkets when a team kept talking, seat-leaving, and aggression low.

The teacher flipped the game on and off four times to be sure any change came from the game.

Each time the game came back, disruptive acts dropped to almost zero.

The drops were large and immediate, even with no extra adult in the room.

Haemmerlie (1983) used the same ABAB flip design with grown-ups. Staff got a day off for perfect attendance, and both absences and resident disruption fell. The pattern shows group contingencies work across ages.

Edwards et al. (1970) gave one shy preschooler the job of handing out candy. Peer contact shot up, just as the Sudan game cut disruption. Both studies show tiny, low-cost rewards can yield big classroom change.

Smith et al. (2014) looks different on the surface. They used stars to teach hand-washing to kids with mild ID, while A et al. used team points to curb disruption in general-ed pupils. The common thread: tokens plus praise equal fast gains in school.

You can run the Good Behavior Game tomorrow with nothing more than chalk, a timer, and a bag of stickers. Pick two teams, define three rules, and award one point per clean five-minute stretch. The Sudan study shows the trick travels; local prizes and a confident teacher are all you need. Try it during the hardest period of the day first—if it works there, it will work anywhere.