Cardinal Reading Strategies

Dr. Dunson

Walter E. Dunson, Ph.D., B.C.A.S.E., is the executive director/founder of Cardinal Reading Strategies.  He has nearly thirty years of experience working with students internationally in the areas of language-based learning and language acquisition.  Dr. Dunson is recognized for his knowledge of literacy, learning differences, dyslexia, and English phonology/morphology.  He is an author, a lecturer, a senior literacy consultant and trainer, and a special education advocate who is board-certified by The American Academy of Special Education Professionals (AASEP) and The National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET).  He is trained in advocacy in all thirteen disability classifications under IDEIA. AASEP/NASET members adhere to a strict code of ethics and fulfill continuing education requirements in special education, including evidence-based reading research.   Dr. Dunson serves on the NASET/AASEP Advisory Council for Board Certifications and Professional Development.  Further, he serves on the editorial board of two peer review journals: the Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals (JAASEP) and Special Education Research, Policy & Practice (SERPP).

 

A former language training instructor at the Kildonan School in Amenia, NY and the Briarwood School in Houston, TX, Dr. Dunson was mentored through a 2760-hour practicum in the Orton-Gillingham Approach by a founding member of the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators (AOGPE).  In order to provide diagnostic-prescriptive remediation, he has received additional training in:

    • Lindamood-Bell’s Phoneme Sequencing Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech

    • Visualizing and Verbalizing Program of Concept Imagery for Comprehension and Thinking

    • Seeing Stars Program of Symbol Imagery for Sight Words, Reading, Phonemic Awareness, and Spelling

    • Dr. Jane Fell Greene’s Language! Program, a curriculum for at-risk and ESL students in grades K-12 and includes components for writing, spelling, reading, grammar, and vocabulary

 

In keeping with the findings of the National Reading Panel, Dr. Dunson also incorporates:

    • Great Leaps for Reading, a program that has been recognized for years as a researched and evidence-based fluency program that enables students to make significant strides in their reading.

    • Six Way Paragraphs, a three-level series that teaches the basic skills necessary for reading factual material through the use of the following six types of questions: subject matter, main idea, supporting details, conclusions, clarifying devices, and vocabulary in context.

    • Sounds and Letters, a manual of cumulative units of phonemic awareness drills intended for use by teachers or speech-language pathologists to build efficiency in the five activities of phonemic awareness (replication, blending, segmenting, substitution, and rhyming).

 

Dr. Dunson is strong proponent of evidence-based reading research, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the International Dyslexia Association (Houston Branch).  He is the author of School Success for Kids with Dyslexia and Other Reading Difficulties, The English Code, and the co-author of Understanding Twice Exceptional Learners: Connecting Research to Practice. Additionally, he is the creator of The English Code Language Training System, an Orton-Gillingham-based, multi-sensory language training system that incorporates auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic modalities with interactive, digital content to create highly effective evidence-based reading instruction.

 

Dr. Dunson has appeared as a guest on NPR and Project Baltimore, presented on the importance of evidence-based reading instruction before the Maryland State Board of Education, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, the Maryland House of Delegates, and the Maryland Senate.  He has served as an expert witness and an educational advocate in cases involving the District of Columbia Public Schools and several county school districts in Maryland and Virginia, and he served as the keynote speaker at the 17th Annual Region 4 Dyslexia Conference in Houston, Texas on December 16, 2016.  In addition to his position at Cardinal Reading Strategies, he is a former member of Right to Read-Maryland, a coalition of educational organizations, advocates, and supporters who have the common goal of improving teacher education so that all teachers have the knowledge and tools to teach reading effectively.  Several bills that foster effective reading instruction using the science of reading have been introduced in the Maryland legislature by Right to Read-Maryland over the past four years.  Dr. Dunson has also served as an adjunct professor in Loyola University Maryland’s Graduate School of Education where he taught evidence-based reading instruction to public and private school educators, and he is a former member of the Maryland State Department of Education Elementary Literacy Work Group, a committee chartered to revise the four reading courses at the college/university level that teachers must complete in order to obtain state certification. 

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