We are part of the PeaceBuilder program. Keeling officially became a PeaceBuilder's school in January of 1996, having been piloted in grades 4 and 5 for the first half of that school year. This unique violence prevention curriculum was developed in Tucson and was based on over 30 years of both brain and violence research. Children at risk for violent behaviors have been shown to interrupt teaching and learning activities. The PeaceBuilder curriculum is a tool which gives us (parents, teachers, students) an approach to positively working with at-risk students.

During reading periods, students are grouped across age lines for 90 minutes so that each reading class contains students at one reading level. This eliminates the need to have reading groups within the class and increases the amount of time for direct instruction. Also use of educational specialists as reading teachers during reading time reduces the size of most reading classes. The reading program in grades K-1 emphasizes language skills, auditory discrimination and sound blending, and uses engaging, phonetically regular mini-books which students read to one another in pairs. At the second through the sixth grade levels, students use school or district selected reading materials, basals, and trade books. This program emphasizes cooperative learning activities built around partner reading, identification of characters, settings, and problem-solutions in narratives, story summarization, writing, and direct instruction in reading comprehension skills. At all levels, students read books of their choice for twenty minutes each evening as homework.