All bashing unnecessary and unhelpful.
Most readers have access to more than one reading strategy/approach when they decode text.
- Most readers use a speedy orthographic strategy when reading familiar words. This relies heavily on contributions from the visual perception and memory system. (It is probably piggy-backing on shape- and object-processing systems that we share with many other species.)
- In addition, most readers have access to a phonological route, which relies more heavily on auditory processing and language systems. A good reader will fall back on slower phonological processing when they meet an unfamiliar word. In practice, fluent readers use a mixture of both all the time.
When you teach reading to a neurologically-typical student, both processing routes are available to the teacher/student. It follows that students can use either/or the two processing routes and therefore will learn via and use both orthographic (Look&Say) and phonological (phonic) methods. Which is most successful for a specific student is dependent on such things as the resources/ experience that the student has access to, the comfort level of the teacher in using one method over the other and there are probably individual differences between students in which system may mature faster/ be more efficient etc. For neurologically-typical students, phonics and Look & Say both work and while at an individual level one may work for some better than the other, but the difference is marginal and not worth worrying about. It makes sense that government policy and support favours the method which gets the biggest bang for the buck. Current, for 80-90% of students, phonics works as fine as any other method, helps develop other language skills like phonemic segmentation etc. and gives kids a strategy to deal with unfamiliar words.
Now, lets turn to the 10-20% of the population who, for one reason or another, do not have two routes available to them when they read. Some individuals, like the OP's son have language processing issues which means that the phonetic building blocks, that are usually in place in a child of his age, are not a sufficiently well-developed foundation on which to build reading skills. Basically, the phonological route may not available to him right now, or if it is it doesn't work very effectively and is bloodly hard work for him.
There are a couple of ways forward - (1) work on improving phoneme processing skills etc. and when these improve they will become available to mediate reading also. This would be mrz's approach I think. A good teacher using a good phonics based system will be able to gains in reading as speech and language skills improve, but no faster. This approach, based on the assumption that you can get language processing up to speed kills two birds with one stone and works for almost everyone. However, these students will be unable to read until SLP skills get going. Alternatively, (2) OP can work with her son using Look & Say techniques that access the other route to reading. This will get him started reading (even if it is a limited vocabulary), improving his self-efficacy and self-esteem and hopefully enough functional reading skills to help him access the curriculum in other areas like math word problems. In time, as his language processing skills improve, he will be able to start benefitting from a phonic approach as well as the phonetic route becomes available. Mrz's approach wouldn't fail this student as long as good phonic instruction is available indefinately into the future - and we know that isn't true as education systems give up on the hard cases.
OP's son is probably always going to find reading hard work, but the sooner he thinks of himself as a reader and starts reading functionally the better the outcome is going to be for him. OP I say get him going any way you can - Dr. Suess, Peter & Jane, operating instructions to xmas presents anything... Reading success breeds reading and what OP's son needs right now is success not educational philosophy.
Mrz - you keep harping on saying how Look&Say has failed thousands. If nothing else, a classroom of kids teaches us that it is full of individual differences and multiple strategies - several per kid and varying by day of the week... When a child struggles to understand something in a math lesson, we try explaining it again and in a different way if necessary. We don't say to a child "I can't explain it to you using a different approach because there are some kids somewhere who don't understand it the other way". I am sorry that your son needed a phonetic approach, and nobody tried it but it doesn't logically follow that Look&Say is the work of the devil. Look&Say alone fails those who needed a phonic approach, because visual memory etc. is compromised but phonics alone will similarly fail those who have to rely on a orthographic route because their language processing is compromised. Most kids learn to read despite which method is used, but for that 10-20% who don't have both reading routes available, it is devastating if an inappropriate method is used exclusively. It would be great if kids entered classrooms with clear indicators giving us advanced notice of which students will respond to which method, but they don't.
If a child in your class couldn't do the 100 m sprint because their legs don't work you wouldn't prevent them using a wheelchair on the basis that wheelchairs don't work as well as feet.