Cosmic Walk in Prague

Here are my notes from the Cosmic Walk that took place at a Montessori teacher training in Prague.   This Cosmic Walk was inspired by the post and picture of a Cosmic Walk in India, lead and posted  by Nagesh Anand.

The photo is from Cosmic Walk activity – taken after presentation, right before disassembling.Wednesday afternoon the new group (19 including the 5 graduating) were given instructions for Cosmic Walk with materials (rope, tea lights, laminated script on numbered index cards) and told to create as they wished.  Pic shows how cosmic walk looked at end of their presentation on Friday for the others.

The audience (returning Prague teachers) sat in chairs around rope while the new teachers sat on floor between rope and chairs. Teachers on floor took turns reading the 30 index cards (script) while one placed tea lights on rope as they read each one. They attempted to arrange placing of tea lights proportionate to time frame – marked rope with tiny markers of white tape. It seemed very powerful, moving, somber – effective : )
(We did have music playing softly in background and not sure if music was needed – the quiet/silence seemed nice too.)

An additional note from Prague: creators of cosmic walk needed to ask a couple of audience members to read a script card and after the presentation, some commented that ‘next time’ they would have asked more of audience to participate (volunteer) in that way which was easy to do since script cards were numbered and each read the number before reading the script…again, just info on how this group created the experience.

Thanks for sharing this activity, Jennifer! I’d say it was ‘a hit’ and definitely think it should be incorporated into training and with students following Big History.

It seemed to go well to have the group be given instructions and materials and ultimately let them create the experience as they wanted, considering space they have, audience, etc.  If it were a class of students, same would seem true (even if they had no audience, but just created it for themselves ? Though always good to have ‘real audience’ as end goal.)

I did show video, “The Known Universe,” to group on Wednesday before they put the Cosmic Walk presentation together.