The schoolyard is the open space beside a school building where children go when they are not in lessons — break, lunch, before the bell. They run, talk, play. In American English this is the usual word. In British English people more often say playground, and the wider land around the school may be the school grounds. A schoolyard is not the classroom, and it is not always a marked sports field, though in a small school the same patch of ground may do both jobs. People also use schoolyard when they talk about children’s social world between classes: schoolyard fights, schoolyard teasing. Yard here means an open piece of ground by a building, not the measuring unit.