What kinds of words or phrases would you use to describe this situation?

As a teacher I am obliged to look after children during the recess/break.

How would you call this situation in English? Let me elaborate a little bit: Each lesson lasts 45 minutes, then students are entitled to a break. During that break, usually two teachers take care/look after the children in order to prevent any dangerous situations to happen. I am curious about how we can describe this situation. I would go for 'I have a break duty after my 4th lesson on second floor'.

Am I correct when I use 'recess/a break duty' term?

Solution 1:

In my district, we had two breaks in elementary school: a fifteen-minute recess and a 45-minute lunch break. The students go outside and play during both breaks. Teachers look after the kids during recess; at lunch, that's done by a rotation of parent supervisors.

In high school, there were four classes a day, in different classrooms. Students got a five-minute break to move between their first and second classes. Between the second and third classes, there was a fifteen-minute long break. Lunch break was an hour between third and fourth classes. In all cases, students didn't have to go outside, so a rotation of teachers roamed the halls making sure nothing bad happened.

My teachers usually referred to this as supervision or being on duty, as in

"I can't meet then. I have supervision tomorrow."

"I'm on duty (at recess / after third period / etc.)"

"Who else is on duty today?"

I come from a family of teachers, so I can confirm that these are still common usage in my district. However, I'd imagine that usage differs from place to place, especially if a specific phrase like lunchtime supervision or recess duty is used in your collective bargaining agreement. Any combination of

playground / lunch / recess / break / ...

supervision / monitoring / duty

will give you an understandable term for this situation which I guarantee is widely used somewhere; the examples playground duty, playground monitoring, and lunch monitoring, are all cited in other answers. (Note that none of these take the article a; you'd say "I have playground duty" instead of "I have a playground duty.") So

"I have break duty after my 4th lesson on second floor"

sounds good to me!

Your best answer for what you should call it, though comes from Mitch's comment: use whatever phrase is most commonly used by the teachers around you!

Solution 2:

A person who supervises others in a primary school during break times (i.e., when no teaching is involved) is often called a monitor.

mon·i·tor (mn-tr)
n.
1. One that admonishes, cautions, or reminds, especially with respect to matters of conduct.

You could say you had monitor duties during those periods. You could also call these supervisory duties, but that would be more formal.

Solution 3:

Both recess and break can be used to call "the period of time between classes".

The OALD deems recess as North-American English and break (or break time) as British English.

Solution 4:

When I was in elementary school, teachers who were assigned to supervise children during lunch time and recess were said to be on "lunch duty" or "playground duty". (The latter as after lunch we generally went outside to the playground for a while.)

By extension I'd think "recess duty" would be a logical term.

Does the school not have an "official" name for this task?