Tenerife School Tops Global Education Ranking

Colegio Santo Domingo de Güímar in Tenerife has earned a top spot in a global education ranking. This ranking looks at how well students understand what they read and how good they are at Spanish. The school won this award because of its excellent use of Fiction Express, an online platform where students and authors work together to create novels.

This achievement highlights how important new teaching methods are for building key skills like critical reading and clear communication. These skills are vital for students to do well in school and develop their own ideas. The Tenerife school is number one on a list of over 9,000 schools worldwide. Other Spanish schools recognized include Saint Patrick’s English School in San Sebastián, Escola Pia de Balaguer, IES Tubalcaín in Aragón, and Colegio Padre Damián in Barcelona.

To decide the winners, judges carefully looked at how much schools used all the features of the platform. This included how often students read, wrote reviews, and participated in forums. They also checked the use of understanding and assessment tools, and reviewed data on student improvement.

The school in Güímar, one of about six schools in the Canary Islands using Fiction Express, received its award on Thursday, February 19. The ceremony took place at Casa Rius in Barcelona. Important people from education, culture, and business attended, coming from Catalonia, the rest of Spain, and other places where the platform is used.

Fiction Express, a project from Barcelona, is known for its unique educational approach. Over five weeks, a new chapter of a story is released every Friday. Students then vote on what happens next. This setup lets students talk directly with the author in a forum, discussing the story and its main ideas. The platform also gives teachers many learning tools, such as quizzes, projects that connect books to different subjects (covering writing, speaking, and more), and specific vocabulary and reading exercises for each chapter. After a story is finished, students give their feedback, which helps decide the winners of the yearly Fiction Express awards. Famous youth authors who write in Catalan, Spanish, and English often take part, including Francesc Miralles, Arturo Padilla, Maite Carranza, and Pedro Ramos.