Preparatory School in Johannesburg, South Africa

Grayston Preparatory School, Johannesburg:
Grayston Preparatory is located at Corner North Road and Gillard Street, Sandown, Sandton, Johannesburg in South Africa. The inclusive curriculum at Grayston Preparatory ensures that your child will receive an education of genuine quality. The development of self-confidence and self-esteem is of crucial importance. Problem solving, critical thinking, decision making and life skills are key components of the academic strategies, preparing your child for the road ahead. We offer a preparatory school program for ages 5 - 13 years and provide a child-focused educational package based on the individual needs of the learner. We also offer English support for non-English speaking families. Grayston Preparatory School proudly goes forward, “Holding the Hand that Holds the Future”.

Preschool
Grayston Preparatory School boasts a fully functional Pre-Prep division. In this unit we have 3 groups of Grade R children, aged 5 / 6 years old; 2 groups of Grade 00 children, aged 4 / 5 years old and 1 group of Grade 000 children, aged 3 / 4 years old.

Junior Preparatory Phase
Children enter our Junior Preparatory in Grade One in the year in which they turn seven. Grades One, Two and Three form the Junior Preparatory Phase. We follow Outcomes Based Education, believing firmly in the advantages our learners gain from this problem-solving, co-operative approach. All eight learning areas receive attention in our integrated, inclusive curriculum.

The three Learning Programmes are:

- Literacy: This encompasses speaking, reading and writing in English. We also introduce Afrikaans as the first additional language and deal with this on an oral basis.

- Numeracy: This involves, amongst other things, number manipulation, problem-solving, measurement and data-handling.

- Lifeskills: This includes the other six learning areas of:
Life Orientation (including Physical Education); Economic Management Sciences; Arts and Culture (including Music, Drama and our internal cultural programme); Social Sciences; Natural Sciences; Technology (including Information Technology)

Senior Preparatory Phase
The Senior Preparatory  Phase is a nurturing and stimulating environment for children from Grades Four (aged 10) to Grade Seven (aged 13).

In Grades Four and Five we use a class teaching strategy where learners remain with their respective class educator for every learning area other than Art, Information Communication Technology, Physical Education, Music and Zulu. We employ specialist teachers for those particular aspects of our children’s education.

In Grades Six and Seven we use a subject teaching strategy where learners move to their respective educators’ classrooms.

• Children in Grade One & Two are expected to participate in at least one afternoon of sporting activity per week.

• Children from Grade Three to Seven are expected to participate in at least two sessions of co-curricular activities per week, one of which must be of a sporting nature.

Periodically as seasons change pupils are issued with a timetable of all activities offered. Pupils must participate fully in these programmes as these form an important part of the School’s overall curricular policy and mission to educate holistically. A wide choice of activities is offered. These vary slightly from term to term but the following regular programme of activities are offered:

CULTURAL
- Chess Club (Senior Preparatory)
- Art Club (Senior Preparatory)
- Choir Djembe Group (Grade 2, 3 & 4)
- Orff Band (Grade 2,3 & 4)
- Ballet
- Instrumental Tuition Marimba Band (Grade 5, 6 & 7)
- Dance Class (Grade 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7)
- Creative Drama (Grades 1 to 7)

This convenient and well-managed facility is available to all Grayston children from Grade 000 to Grade 7 from directly after school until 17:30 Monday to Friday during the school term, and from 07:30 to 17:30 during school holidays.

Although the responsibility is on the children to do their homework at this time, homework is supervised by enthusiastic trained staff before and after co-curricular activities. The computer laboratories and media centre are available to all Aftercare children during this time.

Holiday care programmes are planned well in advance. Our learners enjoy outings to parks and zoos. Several art activities such as: making paperweights, papier-mâché’ modelling, pottery etc. are scheduled for the holiday time. The children bake from time to time and love treasure hunts.

A variety of sandwiches, fruits and fruit juices are provided for the children during the afternoon. During the holidays, children enjoy a hot meal for lunch each day, plus morning and afternoon snacks.

The Child Support Centre is an Assessment and Therapy Unit which started at Grayston in 1993. We provide a multi disciplinary assessment to any child that may be experiencing academic or emotional difficulties. In addition the Support Centre provides adult counselling for individuals, couples and families. This counselling is provided for individual issues, marital challenges, trauma, parenting techniques or family conflict.

Our team of professionals include the Educational Psychologist, Occupational Therapist, Speech, Language and Hearing Therapist and the Remedial Therapist. Working closely with Grayston staff allows us the opportunity to obtain a holistic view of the child. After the initial assessment process, if the child requires intervention, therapy is provided on the school premises.