GACE Special Education General Curriculum/Elementary Education (703) study plan

Map every legal/ethical requirement you must know (IDEA categories and eligibility, procedural safeguards, LRE, FAPE, evaluation timelines, discipline rules, confidentiality under FERPA, teacher responsibilities under Section 504) into a single one-page reference sheet written from memory.

Distinguish the roles of IEP team members and the parent's procedural rights well enough to answer scenario questions about who decides placement, when consent can be overridden, and what a school must do after a parent revokes consent.

Outline the anatomy of an IEP (present levels, measurable annual goals, progress monitoring, services, accommodations, transition) and label which component addresses which legal requirement.

Sequence the IEP process end to end (referral, evaluation, eligibility, development, implementation, annual review, reevaluation) and identify the timeline attached to each step.

Compare norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, curriculum-based, and progress-monitoring measures by purpose, and match each to the decision it should inform (screening, eligibility, instructional planning, progress).

Compute and interpret standard scores, percentile ranks, and grade equivalents, and explain in writing why a grade-equivalent score alone should not drive an IEP goal.

Apply the discrepancy and response-to-intervention frameworks to a written case description and justify which students warrant further evaluation.

Identify ethical testing practices: qualifications, administration fidelity, accommodations versus modifications during testing, and reporting limits of scores.

Evaluate the reliability and validity concerns that would make an assessment result unusable for a high-stakes eligibility decision.

Draft three measurable annual goals in different domains that include condition, behavior, and criterion, then critique a set of poorly written goals and rewrite them.

Design a data-collection plan (what to measure, how often, how to graph) for each goal you wrote.

Match high-leverage instructional practices (explicit instruction, modeling, guided practice, scaffolding, feedback, peer tutoring, mnemonics) to the learner profiles they best serve.

Differentiate one lesson for three students with different needs (one with a reading disability, one with an attention deficit, one with a mild intellectual disability) using accommodations and modifications correctly distinguished.

Plan a co-teaching arrangement and describe how roles and responsibilities shift across the six common co-teaching models.

Write and rehearse a functional behavior assessment summary that identifies antecedents, behavior, and consequences, and proposes a function-based behavior intervention plan.

Design a classroom environment (physical arrangement, routines, expectations, transition procedures) that prevents common problem behaviors, and justify each design choice.

Select positive behavioral supports and reinforcement schedules appropriate to elementary students and explain how to fade supports over time.

Apply crisis and de-escalation principles and describe the legal limits on restraint and seclusion in your state context.

Evaluate a case where a behavior plan is failing and identify what to revise, distinguishing skill deficits from performance deficits.

Sequence the five components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension) and identify the assessment and instructional approach appropriate to each.

Analyze a running record or fluency probe and use the data to name a specific instructional next step.

Design a phonics or phonemic awareness mini-lesson using explicit instruction with modeling, guided practice, and cumulative review.

Explain the characteristics of dyslexia and other reading disabilities and how they change instructional intensity and accommodation choices.

Build a comprehension lesson that teaches a strategy explicitly (e.g., questioning, summarization, text structure) with scaffolded release of responsibility.

Explain the progression of number sense, place value, and operations across the elementary grades and identify where common misconceptions originate.

Diagnose student error patterns in multi-digit computation and word problems and prescribe targeted remediation.

Design a concrete-representational-abstract sequence for one target skill (e.g., fractions, place value, multiplication) and describe the manipulatives used at each stage.

Differentiate math instruction for students with math disabilities and for students with language-based needs, including how to reduce reading load in word problems.

Write math IEP goals that are measurable and tied to grade-level standards with appropriate scaffolds.

Summarize the core content expectations for elementary science, social studies, and the arts and identify the literacy demands embedded in each.

Design a content-area lesson that embeds reading and writing strategies for students with disabilities.

Select and justify accommodations for science labs, map and timeline work, and arts activities that preserve the learning objective.

Build a vocabulary routine for content-area terms that supports students with language and learning disabilities.

Write an assessment for a content-area unit that offers valid alternate ways to demonstrate mastery.

Assemble every deliverable from weeks 1-7 into a single indexed study binder and identify your three weakest areas by self-quiz performance.

Complete two timed full-length practice sets and analyze every missed item by domain and error type (content gap, misread, or reasoning error).

Re-teach your three weakest areas using targeted review and write a one-page error log with the corrected reasoning for each recurring mistake.

Rehearse scenario-based constructed responses under time pressure, focusing on legal and instructional decision-making.

Finalize a test-day plan covering timing strategy, flag-and-return tactics, and how you will handle unfamiliar terminology.