Okay, so yesterday I was helping my little cousin with his homework, and the question was, you guessed it, “how to spell Diego.” Seemed simple enough, right?
First thing I did was ask him to spell it out. He started with a “D,” then “I,” and then he got stuck. So, I figured I’d let him struggle a bit, you know, learn from the process and all that. After a few minutes of him trying different combinations, he was clearly getting frustrated.
That’s when I stepped in. I told him, “Okay, let’s break it down. You’ve got the ‘D’ and the ‘I’ right. What usually comes after ‘I’ in names like that?” We went through a few examples, like “Liam” and “Brian,” and he finally shouted, “‘E’!”
So we had “DIE.” Next, I asked him what sound he was hearing at the end. He said, “Goooo.” So I prompted him, “What letter makes that ‘Goo’ sound?” He got it pretty quick after that: “G!”
Now we had “DIEG.” I then asked him what the final letter could be. It didn’t take long before he landed on the “O”.
The whole process looked like this:
- Start: Kid’s stuck
- Step 1: Spell what you know (D, I)
- Step 2: Sound out the next syllable (E)
- Step 3: What’s the next sound and letter (G)
- Step 4: Final sound letter (O)
Finally, we had “DIEGO.” He spelled it out loud a couple of times, and I made him write it down a few times just to be sure. He even started using it in sentences, like “Diego is a cool name” and “I want to be as smart as Diego.”
It was pretty satisfying to see him finally get it. Sometimes, just breaking things down into smaller steps makes all the difference. Plus, now he knows how to spell his new favorite name.
