This research clarifies the relationship between the motion information provided by elementary school students and their acquisition of motor skills in physical education lessons. Elementary school second graders were asked to describe in writing the skills they observed in a video on the gymnastics that they were show before and after the physical education lessons. We then compared the contents of the written observations of two groups of graders: one that developed motor skills and one that failed to develop motor skills after the lessons. An analysis of their written descriptions revealed the following:

(1) A combination of pair practice and evaluation criteria, adopted by the teacher to help students recognize the development of their motor skills, made them focus attention after the lessons on the motions they had difficulty observing before the lessons.
(2) The group that developed motor skills after the lessons gave more descriptions of core skill aspects, while the group that failed to develop motor skills after the lessons did not show any difference in their descriptions of skill aspects before and after the lessons.