"Super" Gallon Man and Spanish Word Work Freebie

I know most of you are familiar with good ole' gallon man. But this is "super" gallon man....so he is slightly cooler ;). I actually got this idea from Amber over at Aventures of a Third Grade Teacher and tweaked and translated it for use in my classroom! If you would like a copy in English, click here to visit Amber's TpT store. It's a free download. I will say that I did change the head and form of my body a little bit in the Spanish version. If you would like the Spanish version, go ahead and click here and it will look exactly like the one above. (I apologize the document isn't beautiful...I scanned it in on one of our copiers today as all I had was hard copies!- It'll work though :))

This week during our word work block we are focusing on the suffixes "-ción/-sión". These are can be super tricky for my kids as they both sound the same! As with almost all of our word work activities, we started on Monday with an open word sort. I gave the kids a variety of words with the focus pattern, but did not give them the categories yet. They chose how they wanted to organize them and reflected on why they did so. Then, today, I gave them the categories, and they resorted them this time doing a closed sort by organizing the words below the correct heading of "-ción" or "-sión". Throughout the rest of the week, my kids use the same words to do a variety of other sorts as well. They love them and particularly with letter patterns such as these they are perfect because they are seeing the words over and over again. 

After my kids cut out their words the first day, I just have them keep them in a plastic bag on which I write their class number and they keep it in their word work folder all week. Then on Friday, they take the bag home and are able to utilize the sort at home as a resource for further practice.

Being as I am in a dual language classroom, I always incorporate comprehension activities within my word work block as well. Because sometimes the kids do not know what the words mean that we are studying- and this is equally as important! Today, to focus on the comprehension component, I gave each of my students a card. The card either contained a picture or a word with our focus letter pattern. The students had to find their partner who had the corresponding card. When all had finished finding their match the students presented their words and pictures to the class. I then put this activity in my pocket chart center so that they could continue to practice.

You can pick up a free copy of the individual student word sort as well as the class picture/word comprehension activity we did by clicking on the image below! 

By the way, does anyone know how to use accents on TpT? I tried to use them for the title of this document and it went all funky monkey on me... It bugs me that the title I posted is not grammatically correct!