The opinion of teachers about the effectiveness of sound based teaching method on teaching reading and writing to the mentally handicapped students subjected to inclusion program

The aim of this study is to help the class teachers who work in elementary schools and who have students subjected inclusion program express their ideas on the efficiency of teaching reading and writing by sound based method.For this purpose, 18 teachers who work in 5 legal elementary schools in the Centre of Middle Anatolia province in 2007-2008 academic year and who have the students subject to inclusion program in their class were interviewed.For the collection of data, semi-structured interviews method from the qualitative data collection was applied. The data were analysed by means of induction method. As a result of the analysis made on the data, the following results have been reached:Most of the teachers who were interviewed explained that the Sound Based Method is useful for the student subjected to inclusion program to learn reading and writing. It is seen that this method shorten the time for learning reading and writing, encourages the student not to memorize, improve the creativeness when they frame sentences and words and they benefit from the visual elements better when they give the sound and the teachers state that when the students who are subject to the inclusion program learn reading and writing with sound based methods, they read slowly.Some teachers state that these students get in difficulty especially when they read words completed with consonants; and therefore, they read slowly because they read by spelling out.Another finding gained is that teachers do not understand what the student who are subject to inclusion program say when they learn by Sound Based Method.Based on the data collected, the teachers raise negative statements about the learning level of student who are subjected inclusion program to write with Sound Based Method. It has been concluded that the student who are subject to inclusion program have difficulty in writing with combining italic style and they cannot make combination; therefore, their motivation decreases and they lose self-confidence.That these student do not divide the syllables appropriately, do not pay attention to punctuations, and they do not leave space between words makes problems.Some teachers state that these students write in combined italic style slowly, and they cannot receive help from their families because nobody in their families know this style of writing; therefore, this situation makes a problem. Moreover, they state that the student subject to inclusion program would have better conclusion with sound based learning method if there were not hand writing.Key words: Inclusion Program, Sound Based Method.