Abstract:

This research aims to investigate the difficulties experienced by children who started elementary school between the ages of 60-69 months, based on the views of elementary school teachers. The data of the research were collected from 111 first-grade elementary school teachers who taught at schools on the Anatolian side of Istanbul in the 2012-2013 academic year. As the data collection tool, a questionnaire developed by the researchers that consisted of 5 sub-dimensions and 38 items was used. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was found as 0.93. The data were analyzed using the SPSS package program and frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and arithmetic average were calculated. The results showed that, first-grade elementary school teachers thought that students in the age range of 60-69 months experienced difficulties in terms of mental, physical and self-care skills, faced various problems in terms of living in a social environment, and experienced problems that stemmed from the physical environment of the school and classrooms.