Almost all students love recess. But schools find that behavior and safety problems
can often occur on the playground-for reasons that are easy to understand. Adult supervision on playgrounds may
be l
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Jim's Hints for Using...
Creating Safe Playgrounds: A Whole-School Approach |
Encourage
Fair Selection of Children for Teams. Some children with poor
social skills or a limited number of friends may find themselves regularly excluded from play groups or selected
last for teams. Playground monitor can take steps in organizing teams to be sure that all children have an equal
chance to participate. For example, the monitor may randomize teams by lining up children by birthday or height,
then have the line count off by 2's to create teams.
Help Monitors to Learn Student Names. One of the most powerful ways that playground monitors can gain positive influence over
students is to learn their names! At the start of the school year, teachers can invite monitors into their classrooms
to teach children rules to playground games. Not only would children love a lesson on games, but also the monitor
can begin to learn children's identities and acquire status as a colleague and equal of the classroom teacher.
Teach Children To Play Cooperative Games. There is some evidence (e.g., Heck et al., 2001) that children engage less frequently
in aggressive behavior when they are playing cooperative games (that is, games in which students are not directly
competing with others) than when engaged in competitive games. In fact, the effect of reduced student aggression
may persist for a time even after the cooperative games are over. Your school may want to invite physical education
instructors or other school staff who know a range of cooperative games and activities to train playground monitors
in their use. |
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imited. Also, students may not always know what behaviors are expec
ted of them on the playground, be tempted to engage in risky behavior
on play equipment or get involved in rough physical horseplay with other children that results in fights or injuries.
The following intervention package (adapted from Lewis et al., 1998 & Heck et al., 2001) teaches children appropriate
rules for playground behavior and allows classrooms to earn rewards over time for positive behavior during recess.
Playground monitors reinforce students for appropriate behavior, assign students to brief time-out as needed for
misbehaving, and provide structure when needed by teaching students
rules to games and organizing activities.
Steps in Implementing This Intervention
Step 1: Create
Staff Guidelines for Defining 'Appropriate' and 'Inappropriate' Playground Behaviors. As
a school staff, agree upon written definitions for acceptable and unacceptable playground behavior. Include specific
examples of each. For instance, a school may include "aggression" under its listing of 'Inappropriate
Behaviors', and define aggression as "unwanted or hurtful physical contact with another student (such as hitting
or pushing); unwanted or hurtful use of language (such as name-calling, verbal threats, or swearing)."
Step 2: Train
Playground Monitors. The most important role in this intervention is that
of the playground monitor. He or she should be trained to:
- Identify when students are behaving appropriately on the playground (according
to the school behavior guidelines) and give children specific praise and feedback about their positive behavior
(e.g., "Johanna, thank you for retrieving the ball for the group. That was considerate of you!").
- Reward students within a group randomly with tickets or other tokens for showing
appropriate behavior.
- Identify when students are misbehaving (according to the school behavior guidelines)
and either (a) give the student a verbal warning or (b) place the student in time-out for a short period.
- Organize and teach children the rules of common playground games.
Step 3: Train Students in Appropriate
Playground Behaviors. Prior to the intervention, teachers in participating
classrooms should introduce their students to the behavioral guidelines (created in Step 1) for using the playground.
Since students learn best with interactive activities, teachers will want to model the appropriate behaviors and
have students practice them as well.
Here is a teacher tip: Once students seem to understand how they are expected to behave during recess, take the
entire class out to the playground for a supervised practice session. Have students practice their skills and give
them immediate feedback (e.g., "Class, watch Travis come down the
slide with his feet forward. That's the correct way to do it. Nice job!").
Practicing right on the playground will help children to more quickly generalize their skills (apply them to a
new setting).
Step 4: Start the Intervention.
Once the intervention has begun:
- Playground monitors randomly distribute good-behavior tickets or other tokens
to students who are behaving appropriately. At the same time, they give the students specific praise for their
good behavior.
- Playground monitors organize and oversee group games (if needed) and remind children
of the rules.
- Playground monitors set aside a time-out location (e.g., "wait-circle"
marked off with chalk in a supervised corner of the recess yard). W
henever students misbehave, a monitor can optionally choose to
deliver a single brief warning (e.g., "Toby, a playground rule is
'Treat others with respect.' That 
means no hitting. This is
a warning"). If the student continues to misbehave, he or she is
placed in the time-out location for a short period (e.g., 5 minutes) before being allowed to return to play.
- Teachers collect the good-behavior tickets when their students return to the
classroom from recess. These tickets are tallied and put into a jar. A running total is kept of the tickets collected.
When the class has collected a certain number of tickets (to be determined by the teacher), the class gets a prize
or privilege (e.g., watching a movie with popcorn, having a pizza party, being allowed additional recess).
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Troubleshooting
Children will not obey the playground monitors.
If children refuse to comply with monitors' requests, your school can give monitors the power to temporarily suspend
the playground privileges of any student who willfully disobeys them. (It is important, of course, that monitors
use this power judiciously, consistently, and fairly.) If one or more students from a particular classroom are
particularly disrespectful, the classroom teacher may want to make surprise visits to the playground to show support
for the monitor and assist him or her in dealing with noncompliant students.
The playground intervention is not very effective.
If your school discovers that the intervention is not working, be sure that:
- Students fully understand what positive behaviors are expected of them on the
playground and what negative behaviors are not permitted.
- Monitors are consistent and fair when enforcing the behavioral expectations on
the playground.
- Students receive regular praise and good-behavior tickets for appropriate behavior.
- Teachers follow through in their classrooms in giving students earned rewards
for good playground behavior.
References
Heck, A., Collins, J., & Peterson, L. (2001). Decreasing children's
risk taking on the playground. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,34, 349-352.
Lewis, T.J., Sugai, G., & Colvin, Geoff (1998). Reducing problem behavior through a school-wide system of effective
behavioral support: Investigation of a school-wide social skills training program and contextual interventions.
School Psychology Review, 27,
446-459.
*Thanks to school psychologist Kelly Malone for selecting graphics for this intervention write-up.
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