EASTHAMPTON – Inside one classroom at Mountain View School, students learn about adaptations by creating their own animal out of art supplies, understand bridges by building their own bridge, and discover angles by building their own catapults.

That hands-on and creative learning is part of a program called STEAM, an increasingly common approach that adds an art component to “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math,” colloquially called STEM.

“They get to be creative, but also there’s the science behind it,” said Megan Kelley Bagg, Mountain View’s STEAM teacher.

Kelley Bagg, who has a 13-year background teaching science, each week teaches around 500 students ranging from first to eighth grade. Her STEAM class is one of the students’ weekly “specials,” along with art, music, gym, library and health.

Recently, Easthampton Public Schools received a $5,200 grant from the Easthampton Learning Foundation, which offers grants to the city’s public school communities, to build Mountain View’s STEAM program systemically beyond the once-per-week class taught by Kelley Bagg.

“We want to make sure that our school is one of the best schools in the area,” said Gen Brough, president of the foundation. “And we do that by supporting our teachers, but also by providing a curriculum that is maybe a little unique compared to other schools in the area, and also providing learning that is engaging.”

Expanding the program involves a partnership with Arts Integration Studio, an Eastworks-based consulting firm that supports and teaches about learning through arts integration.

“It’s a really difficult time in education right now that a lot of teachers are feeling in silos,” said the studio’s founder, Priscilla Kane Hellweg. “There’s such a need for students’ social-emotional support and engagement and collaboration skills. The arts are one of those ways that really authentically supports the whole student learning.”

Together, Kelley Bagg and Kane Hellweg have been working to take the STEAM class content areas and connect and expand into other classroom curriculum.

“We’re taking their science curriculum and figuring out ways that they can sort of interject theater, art, a more hands-on approach to the science curriculum,” Kelley Bagg said.

“The vision is to support both Megan and the classroom teachers in supporting their students,” said Kane Hellweg.

For now, Kane Hellweg and Kelley Bagg are meeting monthly with a cohort of fifth grade teachers at Mountain View for professional development, collaboration and training.

The current focus is on weather, climate and earth systems, with two curriculum units already created for fifth graders and new STEAM units developed monthly based around what teachers are already planning on teaching.

The first STEAM session had to do with climate, clouds and the water cycle. Students began by physically embodying clouds, then sketched clouds, and made predictions about what the weather would be that day.

“This is standards-based content, but integrating many layers to it,” said Kane Hellweg. “When they are embodying it, it’s in their muscle memory. When they are building something, it’s in their visual memory. And when they’re seeing what their friends are doing, it’s their social memory,” Kane Hellweg said.

Kelley Bagg added, “I’ve had students come to me years later and say, ‘Remember when we built that project?’ I don’t think they would have remembered it had they just read it in a book and answered questions. It’s actually becoming part of it that it just goes into their memory.”

In another STEAM unit, students embodied how a pumpkin goes through the five stages of decay, moving their bodies as if they were a decomposing pumpkin.

“I’m not an educator, but I think it gives another perspective on learning,” said Brough. “To be able to learn science differently than reading it in a book, to me, is imperative.”

All the while, the school has also received funding from the Frances R. Dewing Foundation to help support publishing the new STEAM curriculum for other classrooms in Easthampton and beyond to utilize.

“The goal is to expose them to something different and get them excited about wanting to learn,” said Kelley Bagg.

Maddie Fabian can be reached at mfabian@gazettenet.com.