Yep. That's why they call them sight words.
Sounding out is an important strategy in learning to read but proper reading isn't sounding out. We see words and recognise them because of the shape. That is the aim of sight words.

Usually teachers start with the golden words which are the 12 most common words that make up almost a quarter of the words on a page. After that they move on to the next most popular words until they have the top 100 down.

The golden words are

a, and, be, I, in, is, it, of, that, the, to, was