Techniques for developing critical thinking skills in high school students within the framework of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in English and History of Russia

The article is devoted to the problem of developing critical thinking skills in high school students doing a content and language integrated course in English and History of Russia. According to the Federal Educational Standard of Secondary Education in Russia, critical thinking is a metadisciplinary skill resulting from the systematic study of the secondary school course. The article views the critical thinking skills within the framework of Bloom’s taxonomy. Further categorization of critical thinking skills is based on P.A. Facione’s classification. Using the «Historically speaking coursebook» as an example, the article describes a case of implementing a critical thinking development methodology in a CLIL course of English and Russian History. The methodology follows the general outline of the Critical Thinking through Reading and Writing technique but employs a wider range of communication assignments. The study demonstrates the correlation between the critical thinking development methodology and the CLIL principles. The test approval of a series of online lessons on various thematic modules in grades 10–11 was conducted at the Presidential Lyceum Sirius and confirmed the effectiveness of developing critical thinking through Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).