Culturally Authentic Picture Lexicon

The Culturally Authentic Picture Lexicon (CAPL) is a great site to use in classes to help students find pictures that are both authentic and appropriate from other cultures and countries.  All the photographs held in the database were taken by natives of the culture and are organized by language and also by region.  You can either browse or search the CAPL to find great photos from around the world.

One of the great benefits of the CAPL in education is that it can be used by teachers outside of simply being another repository for photos.  Each picture is cataloged by language and region and contains both an English description and foreign language translation.  This is an excellent way to infuse your world language curriculum into searching and project creation.

Another way many educators use the CAPL is to have students use the photos as writing prompts in world history and cultures classes, to recreate the images in art classes, to identify plants and animals in science, or to address cultural differences in Social Studies classes.  The CAPL is a perfect accompaniment to a Project-Based Learning environment with endless cross-curricular possibilities.

Last, but not least, check out the Pictolang Tab on CAPL as well.  This will take you to a sister site where students can play four different games that use the CAPL’s photos:

• Visual Word Trainer – Turns the photos into flash cards so students can practice or learn vocabulary
• Picture Match Game – Given 8 images, students choose the photo that matches the word or phrase caption and are given immediate feedback.
• Word Match Game – Students see one image and find the appropriate caption or vocabulary word from 8 choices, again with immediate feedback
• Analyst Game – Students are given one image and then match the corresponding culture from 8 choices.

I highly recommend giving CAPL a try for both your world language classes, as well as social studies can history classes where you are looking for fun, exciting ways to incorporate real world images and examples for students that infuse and are steeped in modern culture.