Old-School English Educational Games to Help Develop KS1 English Skills

We’ve taken a browse and found some classic, old-school educational englishbgames that we just had to share with you. They brought back so many childhood memories and took us back to our school days!

Let’s get right into it…

Hangman

This game is great for helping students learn new words and practising their spelling. You could play it on the whiteboard with the whole class, or put them in groups to play. To play, one student needs to grab a bit of paper, draw out lines for the word they’re going to make the others guess and leave room for the image in case they get any words wrong – fab!

I Spy

I Spy is great for helping students explore their range of vocabulary, as it challenges them to find words that start with a certain letter. All they need to do is find an object around them, remember its first letter and say “I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with…” and then other students would have to guess the answer. It’s really easy to play!

Word Search

Word searches are super easy to create! All you’ll need to do is draw out a grid and fill it with words you know your students can guess, or put new words in it and use a dictionary to find out what they mean. It’s a fun game to do and doesn’t take a long time to put together.

What’s Missing?

This game is great for your younger students and encourages them to try and recall things they’ve seen before. All you’ll need is a deck of playing cards (or you could use toys, stationery, anything you like!), and choose three/five cards to show to the class for a few seconds, and then pop them back in the deck. Turn the cards away, shuffle, show only two of the cards and ask the class which cards are missing.

We hope you enjoyed our KS1 English educational Game ideas!