The article deals with intercultural competence development of students learning Russian as a foreign language (B2 level) in the Russian language environment during the research lesson. The topic of this lesson “Cultural code of childhood in poetry” allows students to carry out linguistic and cultural research: they analyze key words of prominent poetical works focused on the childhood in the native and Russian poetry, compare them and make conclusions on similarities and differences in cultural codes of different nations. Analysis of their conclusions shows that the research lesson is one of the most effective forms of intercultural competence development.