I helped teach my daughter using the Phonographix method it is great.
When I studied Russian, I learned that words already known were identified by sight. Of course, I learned new words phonetically. Even after more than 30 years, I quickly register even long Cyrillic Russian words from their appearance, but even 3-letter words I haven’t seen before need a little phonetic processing time. I’m not sure if this simply demonstrates that phonetics is how we learn new words, or gives some credibility to sight learning.