Beyond Early Literacy ─ A Balanced Approach to Developing the Whole Child

For early childhood classrooms – where curriculum is increasingly shaped by standards and teachers are pressed for time – Beyond Early Literacy offers a literacy method that goes beyond simply developing language arts skills. Known as Shared Journal, this process promotes young children’s learning across content areas – including their communication and language abilities, writing skills, sense of community, grasp of diverse social and cultural worlds, and understanding of history, counting, numeracy, and time. Pairing interactive talk with individual writing in the classroom community, this rich method develops the whole child.
Special features include:


sample lesson plans, rubrics, and templates throughout the book


children’s artifacts, including examples of oral and written work


teacher accounts examining the use of Shared Journal in the classroom, including strategies and suggestions


a Companion Website with templates, additional resources, and video clips of in-classroom teaching and examples of exciting ways to use new technologies.

This two-part book is first framed by current theory and research about children’s cognitive, language, and literacy development, and an extensive body of research and case studies on the efficacy of the method. The second part features strategies from on-the-ground teachers who have used the process with their students and explores how Shared Journal can be used with new technologies, can meet standards, and can be appropriate for diverse populations of children. This is a fantastic resource for use in early childhood education courses in emergent literacy, language arts, and curriculum.

Janet B. Taylor is Wayne T. Smith Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Early Childhood Education at Auburn University.

Nancy Amanda Branscombe is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Athens State University.

Jan Gunnels Burcham is Professor of Early Childhood Education and Fletcher Distinguished Chair of Teacher Education at Columbus State University.

Lilli Land is a recipient of the NAESP National Distinguished Principal Award for Alabama and currently is an education consultant.

Part One: The Child as Learner

1. The Child as Learner

2. The Process of Shared Journal
3. Learning in the Communicative Arts
4. The Reading-Writing Connection

5. Developing the Narrative Voice

6. Learning in the Content Areas

Part Two The Teacher as Facilitator

7. A Study of Cases

8. Meeting Standards and Mandates: A Teacher’s Story

9. Technology and Shared Journal

10. Shared Journal with Special Groups



11. Assessment and Documentation: A Teacher’s Story

12. Teachers as Advocates