Foreign language lessons at school are designed to form key competences, with communicative competence being an important one, implying students' ability and readiness to communicate in a foreign language. However, there are difficulties in mastering the foreign language. As before, the main ones are: the lack of active oral practice, the absence of the environment for foreign language communication, and the presentation of educational material in textbooks without taking into account the principle of individualization and differentiation of education. The solution to this problem is possible through applying the ideas of developmental teaching at the lesson. The purpose of this study is to substantiate theoretically and test experimentally the effectiveness of using the ideas of developmental learning at the foreign language lessons to develop students' communicative competence. The leading method of the research is a pedagogical experiment aimed at revealing the level of the development of students' communicative competence. The content analysis of foreign language textbooks was also used to identify potential options to apply ideas of developmental learning. Results of the research: The article presents a selection of topical projects aimed at students' partially exploring and research activities that form the communicative competence directly; there were developed lessons to introduce the ideas of the developmental teaching at the lesson. It is proved that the projects assembled in the textbook contribute to building interdisciplinary connections, stimulate the development of the communicative competence and, on the whole, favour the development of the student's personality. Relevance of the study: The study proved the effectiveness of using the ideas of the developmental teaching to develop students' communicative competence. The materials of the article can be used to improve the process of teaching the foreign language at the secondary school; developed and tested different topical projects can be used by teachers of the foreign language in class.