"I’m not a workaholic, despite the things my family say. And as a Senco in a hectic primary school I always look forward to a day out of school, especially if that day is a chance to go to the annual Special Needs Exhibition. It’s a chance to talk other people facing the same challenges, to see new resources and to share ideas. It’s also an opportunity to search for yet another fun way to help those kids who really struggle to learn. After all, that’s what I see all day long: kids who would love to come to school and find learning easy, but instead they wake up every day knowing that they will have to work hard at things that other children appear to find so easy.

So last year at the exhibition I was intrigued to see a stall that wasn’t set up with expensive CDs and ICT technology, or boxed games with bigger and more amazing claims about solving a learning problem. Instead there were piles of coloured cups and kids clearly having fun. To my surprise, one of those kids was a little girl with Downs Syndrome. And, what was even more amazing, she was competing with kids who were fully able. When I stopped to look more closely, the things she was doing were even more fascinating. Her hand-eye co-ordination was great, her motor skills were well developed and she knew the sequences of the moves perfectly.

Back in school I did some budget juggling, which needs not quite the same level of dexterity but definitely more cunning. This is a sport where the rules seem to change all the time, and hand-eye co-ordination is vital, so I could have done with some practice. The moves all went smoothly and before long I had a set of cups in school.

We ran a special introductory day, with workshops and demonstrations from the British champion, Kate Parker, who had only recently been on TV. The kids also had an opportunity to see their teachers trying stacking and doing really badly. They were sure they could do better. And they were right!

As I’d hoped, they loved stacking. They picked it up quickly. They were prepared to practise over and over again to become as quick as Kate Parker. They were having fun and they didn’t even know they were helping their learning. I knew it had been worthwhile when I noticed Susan. She is 8 years old, has Aspergers Syndrome, is dyspraxic, and is used to finding school and work a struggle. Here she was, stacking cups confidently and accurately, and beating her own time over and over again. Her smile got even bigger as she heard a classmate say ‘You’re good at this!"