Last year I went in a two weeks after school started for a conference with a visual aid. I went in and said that I didn't know what a typical child in their 2nd grade class (he was team taught with two teachers)did over the summer but my son spent hours swimming on the swim team each day, played outside, played way too many video games and watched his fair share of TV and then showed them the contents of a shopping bag of a good representation of all the books he read over the 78 day vacation. The books we didn't own and had checked out of the library I had listed on a piece of paper to the best of my recollection. Apparently it was outside the realm of normal amount of reading (and most of them well above level) to make their eyes go wide with disbelief. He wasn't yet tested for gifted at that point (but they knew he was on the list for testing)--not until right before Thanksgiving did he get tested. But during that conference I think they got the idea that he was something they hadn't seen before in this town.
Both teachers said that they were taking gifted classes and had already been trying out various things they were learning on differentiating and compacting on him because they had noticed that his rate of learning was so fast. So I guess it was pretty obvious without the conference but it was nice to come together as a team. And I would say we worked well together as a team the whole year. I assumed that they had his best interest in mind and I was so pleased that they totally rose to my expectations.
I guess my advice is to admit you might not know exactly what typical developing children are doing (even if you have some idea) and just share what your child is capable of accomplishing and don't be afraid to use a visual aid or other documentation to let the teachers get to know more about your child.
