According to previous studies and practices, learning in groups is very important in physical education (PE) classes for students. Many researchers and teachers have been trying to analyze how children connect each other in groups by subjective data such as observations or interviews in PE classes. However, it is difficult to understand how children communicate with each other by subjective data. Recently, the device named the Business Microscope (BMS: Hitachi) is used to investigate people’s communication as quantitative data. The purpose of this study is to verify children’s communication in PE classes by quantitative data. We investigated one PE class (creative dance) with 7th grade students from a public junior high schools in Japan. In order to measure the students’ communications and physical activities as visible data, all students participated in the PE class wore the BMS and pedometers. The PE teacher was interviewed after the class to examine the differences between teacher’s observations and students’ actual communications. Upon using the BMS, it is clear that group-communication comprises three phases. Some groups with first phase showed that students’ communication occurred between limited individuals. In some other groups with second phase, almost all members were connected with each other, and the number of steps increased within the groups. In the third phase, verbal communications of the students were reduced. Students in the third phase group tended to use non-verbal communications such as hand-sign, hand clapping, and voice-rhythm up with voices in this phase. According to the interviews with the teacher, students in third phase were very active and concentrated more on their tasks. These results suggest that there are at least three different phases in PE groups. Students’ communication increases from the first to third phase, but the verbal communication changes to non-verbal ways in the third phase. In addition, students’ level of assertiveness or positiveness rises in the higher phases. It is unknown whether the third phase will occur after the first and the second phases in this survey. In the future it will be necessary to verify the conuity of thess phases.
