The problem of forming students' conceptual thinking remains central to didactics due to a persistent decline in indicators of logical operations among students amid the growing volume of educational information and fragmentation of educational content. The purpose of the study is to identify and substantiate the didactic conditions for forming conceptual thinking in grades 5-9 based on the synthesis of M.N. Skatkin's conceptual provisions (the principle of scientific character, the cultural concept of educational content, and the classification of teaching methods according to the nature of cognitive activity) with technologies of semantic reading of educational text. The methodological basis consists of the system-activity approach, historical and pedagogical analysis of M.N. Skatkin's legacy in the context of the Skatkin-Lerner-Shakhmaev scientific school, and theoretical modeling of didactic conditions. The empirical part was implemented through a pedagogical experiment (N = 134, students of grades 6-8 in general education schools in Moscow and the Moscow region in the 2024-2025 academic year) using modified Amthauer subtests, content analysis of products of educational activity, and expert assessment of the quality of work with educational text. It was established that the systematic inclusion of semantic reading strategies (identifying key concepts, reconstructing the logical structure of the text, and composing concept maps) in the didactic cycle built according to the logic of Skatkin-Lerner productive methods provides a statistically significant increase in the level of conceptual thinking compared with traditional organization of work with text. The results specify the cultural concept of educational content in relation to the modern educational environment and expand the tools for forming metasubject results in the logic of the Federal State Educational Standard for basic general education.