Nowadays in Japan, it is needed that physical education classes are designed to have an impact not only during the classes themselves, but also outside of class, such as in the recess period. The purpose of this study was to explore of features of physical education classes that impacted on pupils’ physical play during school recess. Adopting qualitative methods, we carried out a semi-structured interview on 13 4th to 6th grade students (7 boys and 6 girls) and 9 teachers (5 males and 4 females) who had experienced elementary school physical education classes. The selected students all had experience of physical play after the physical education classes, while the selected teachers all had experience of watching the pupils during physical play after having taught them. Analysis was based on the assessment model reported by Pieron and Cheffers (1998). We found that 4 themes in the program, 2 themes in the learning environment and 4 themes in the learning outcome were feature of physical education classes that were related to physical play during school recess.
