J.S.
It sounds like a sight word test. Just doing what you're doing is fine. It will click, it just might take a little time. Those words will be on his continuous list until they're automatic for him and he won't need to "read" them but will know them by sight aka "as sight words."
There are a lot of words that you can read without reading them. For instance, every word in the sentence right before this one had words in it that you don't have to actually read but the brain can identify them instantly simply through sight. :-)