The views of teachers and parents to the first grade of primary school adaptation week

This study aims to determine the views of teachers and parents on primary school adaptation week. Thus, the survey research design was used in the study. Data were collected from 59 first grade primary school teachers and 419 first grade students parents in the center and rural primary schools in Burdur at the spring semester of 2010-2011 academic year.?Questionnaire of Teachers? Views on Primary School Adaptation Week? and ?Questionnaire of Parents? Views on Primary School Adaptation Week? which developed by the researcher were administered to collect the data. In statistical analysis of data, frequency (f), percent (%) and arithmetic mean values for all indepented variables were determined. ?Mann-Whitney U? and ?Kruskal-Wallis H? tests were done to test the difference between the independent variables. The descriptive analysis method was utilized to analyze the answers of open-ended questions. In the data analysis, the significance level has been adopted as .05. Through the findings from the research, the following conclusions has been reached.Teachers;?agree that The First Grade of Primary School Adaptation Week (FPSAW) helps the students to get used to school, get to know the school and to learn the rules of the school.?indicate that they do not know what they exactly will do in FPSAW.?indicate that FPSAW helps more the first grade students in the schools adapt and it makes the willingness of the students to come to school increase a lot because schools in the centre of the city are very crowded. They stated that FPSAW reaches its goal in the schools in the centre of the city but the time is not enought to reach its goals. Moreover, the parents in the centre of the city give more importance to the first weeks of the schools more for their children.?gave suggestions about the adaptation to the school that the teachers should be informed in advance, school guidance and counselling service should support this process, the activities in adaptation week should be increased and studies should be done to increase the participation of studentsParents;?indicate that FPSAW provides students with more comfort on their behaviours in case of uncrowded environment in the school, increases the willingness of students to come to school and also FPSAW helps the students adapt to the school.?agree that FPSAW is more helpful for the children in city centre to recognize the school physically and to get rid of school phobia. Moreover, they stated that children in city centre received better preschool education. İndicate that this implementation is unnecessary for rural primary schools since there are fewer students. Also they stated that students can start to school with the other students, there should be a different implementation for adaptation to school.?stated that adaptation week is insufficient for the children who did not have preschool education in advance.?low-income families stated that their children consider the school as unimportant and unnecessary. Furthermore, they stated that the less parents have monthly income level, the longer their children needs adaptation process.?suggest that counselling service should support this process, the studies oriented to increase participation in the adaptation week are and schools are physically ready before the adaptation week. Also expressed that families should be informed about the adaptation week.