Headline: Teaching English through STEM: BDPU Lecturer in the STEM & English in Action Series

Iryna Shkola, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Teaching Methodology at Berdiansk State Pedagogical University, delivered a webinar as part of the professional learning series STEM & English in Action. The project is implemented with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the charitable organization “Svitlo,” and is addressed to secondary-school teachers of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics across Ukraine. The series brings educators together around interactive, inquiry-based methods that engage students in problem-solving, discussion, and explanation — while developing their English at the same time.

The talk focused on the “Making the Language Stick” methodology — how to ensure that English supports rather than hinders learning in a STEM lesson. At its core lies the principle that exposure is not acquisition: a student masters a word only after encountering it several times, saying it aloud, building it into a phrase and a sentence, and finally using it in real communication. The teacher’s job, therefore, is to design this journey deliberately, rather than relying on random “immersion.”

To keep the theory from sounding abstract, the speaker guided participants through a complete lesson cycle using the example of a simple experiment on the density of liquids. Step by step — from the warm-up and work with video, to pronouncing terms with the correct stress, moving from words to phrases and sentences, “true/false” tasks with the mandatory correction of false statements, and, finally, free speaking in a mini-project format. The speaker shared a universal recipe that works with any video and any topic: the same twenty words, repeated six times in different forms, turn into vocabulary that the student genuinely owns.

This very webinar series, created for teachers across the country, offers educators a variety of formats for professional growth: full “think-aloud” lesson walkthroughs, show-and-tell classroom experiments, teacher interviews, and panel discussions. This approach allows participants not only to hear the theory but also to see it in action and to exchange practical experience with colleagues from all over Ukraine.

Taking part in initiatives like these reaffirms the active international cooperation of Berdiansk State Pedagogical University and its faculty’s engagement with modern educational practices that integrate language and STEM.