Look-say, Sight Words, Whole Word, Whole Language, Dolch words, and others —all mean essentially the same thing.
The Education Establishment constantly invented new marketing terms for their favorite gimmick, so parents would be too confused to resist.
You can Google “sight words” or “dolch words” and find hundreds of websites that are promoting the same lists of words that kids are supposed to memorize.
(Edward Dolch was an educator.)
Sight words, whole words, Dolch words, all lead to the utter paucity of the American vocabulary.
Why should students memorize lists of words when they can easily sound out words phonetically?
Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill, and it’s so dishonest, too. I imagine schools can drag out reading instruction for years.