LittleRoadsCo.For Preschool Directors
Improving your CLASS score: how classroom materials support teacher-child interactions
The CLASS doesn't score your materials. It scores what happens between teachers and children. But anyone who has watched a skilled teacher pick up a prop and turn it into a twenty-minute conversation knows that materials shape interactions in ways the scoring manual doesn't always make explicit.
Why CLASS focuses on interactions, not stuff
The Classroom Assessment Scoring System was developed by Robert Pianta, Bridget Hamre, and Karen La Paro at the University of Virginia. Unlike the ECERS, which evaluates the physical environment and materials directly, CLASS evaluates the quality of interactions between teachers and children (Pianta & Hamre, 2009, Educational Researcher). It's managed by Teachstone and has become one of the two dominant assessment tools in early childhood education.
CLASS organizes teacher-child interactions into three domains: Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support. Each domain contains specific dimensions that observers score on a 1-7 scale based on what they see during the observation window. The premise is straightforward: what teachers do with children matters more than what's on the shelves. A room full of beautiful materials doesn't help if nobody is using them to engage children in meaningful ways.
The research supports this. Mashburn and colleagues found that Instructional Support — the domain most directly tied to how teachers use materials in learning activities — was the strongest predictor of children's academic and language development in pre-K (Mashburn et al., 2008, Child Development). But here's the thing: you can't have rich instructional conversations about nothing. Teachers need something to talk about. And what's physically present in the room determines what that something is.
Where materials actually help across the three domains
Emotional Support: Regard for Student Perspectives
This dimension captures whether teachers are responsive to children's interests, motivations, and viewpoints. It's about flexibility, following the child's lead, and making space for children to direct activities. Materials that connect to children's real lives naturally support this. When a child points to a road on a neighborhood map and says "that's where my abuela lives," a teacher who responds with curiosity and follow-up questions is demonstrating exactly what observers look for in Regard for Student Perspectives. The material didn't cause the interaction, but it created the opening.
Classroom Organization: Productivity
Productivity measures how well the classroom runs — transitions, routines, whether children know what to do and where to go. Materials that children can use independently, that have clear purposes but flexible applications, score well here because they reduce idle time. A child who sits down at a play mat and begins narrating a drive across town doesn't need a teacher to set up the activity. The material is self-directing, which frees the teacher to have higher-quality interactions with individual children or small groups.
Instructional Support: Concept Development and Quality of Feedback
This is the domain where materials matter most and scores tend to be lowest. Concept Development asks whether teachers help children think more deeply — making connections, comparing and contrasting, reasoning about why things happen. Quality of Feedback asks whether teachers expand on children's responses rather than just affirming them. Both require something substantive to talk about. A map of the neighborhood is substantive. "What's between the school and the park? Why do you think the road curves here? How would you get from the library to your house?" These aren't scripted questions. They're the kind of open-ended prompts that community-based materials naturally invite.
Community-relevant materials as conversation starters
The theoretical connection between culturally relevant materials and better classroom interactions is well-supported by the broader research on culturally responsive teaching. Gloria Ladson-Billings's foundational work established that teaching grounded in students' cultural references produces deeper engagement and better outcomes (Ladson-Billings, 1995, American Educational Research Journal). Geneva Gay's framework for culturally responsive teaching makes the same case: when materials reflect students' lives, the interactions around those materials are richer (Gay, 2002, Journal of Teacher Education).
In practical terms, this means a rug showing the neighborhood around the school does something a generic play mat cannot. It gives children a reason to share what they know. "I go there with my mom." "My cousin lives on that street." "The ice cream truck parks right there in the summer." Each of those statements is an invitation for the teacher to extend, question, and build — exactly the behaviors CLASS rewards in the Instructional Support domain.
"The rug is personalized by the surrounding businesses and community landmarks as well as featuring our church and school. Our Early Childhood Specialist was impressed and I shared the website with her so she can share it with other schools."
— Director & Teacher, GSRP Preschool, Michigan
It's worth being precise here: no single published study has isolated the effect of community-relevant physical materials on CLASS scores specifically. The connection is logical and supported by the CLASS framework's own definitions, by the culturally responsive teaching literature, and by observation. But it hasn't been tested in a randomized trial. What directors can say with confidence is that materials which spark more and better conversations between teachers and children are directionally good for CLASS, and community-relevant materials reliably spark those conversations.
For Florida VPK programs: meeting the contract threshold
Florida is unique in that CLASS is not optional for VPK providers. House Bill 1091 established that every VPK classroom is observed annually using CLASS, and programs that fall below the minimum threshold risk losing their VPK contract (Florida HB 1091, 2021). That makes CLASS scores an existential concern for the roughly 6,000 VPK programs operating in the state.
The pressure is highest on the Instructional Support domain, which consistently scores lowest across all CLASS observations nationally. If your VPK program is near the threshold, the fastest way to improve Instructional Support is to give teachers more to work with. Materials that invite open-ended questions, that prompt children to make connections between the classroom and the real world, that give teachers natural entry points for concept development conversations. A map of the neighborhood does all of these things, and it does them during the exact kind of activity — small group play, center time — that CLASS observers are watching most closely.
For Head Start programs: CLASS in re-competition
Head Start's relationship with CLASS is even more high-stakes. Under the 2007 reauthorization of the Head Start Act, programs scoring in the lowest 10% on CLASS observations are subject to the Designation Renewal System — which means they must compete for continued funding rather than receiving automatic renewal. For a Head Start grantee, low CLASS scores don't just look bad. They can end the program.
Every Head Start grantee in the country uses CLASS. Every one has a materials budget. And the Instructional Support domain — the one most affected by what's physically available for teachers and children to engage with — is the domain where national Head Start averages are consistently lowest. Directors looking to move the needle on re-competition risk should be looking at their Instructional Support scores first, and asking whether their teachers have the materials they need to sustain deeper conversations during learning activities.
Frequently asked questions
Does CLASS actually look at materials?
Not directly. CLASS scores interactions, not environment. But materials shape interactions. A teacher with rich, engaging, conversation-sparking materials in the room will have an easier time demonstrating the behaviors CLASS rewards than a teacher with bare walls and generic toys.
Which CLASS domain benefits most from better materials?
Instructional Support, particularly Concept Development and Quality of Feedback. These dimensions score lowest nationally and are the most dependent on having substantive content for teachers to work with during learning activities.
How does a custom community rug help with CLASS specifically?
It gives teachers a natural entry point for open-ended questions, spatial reasoning conversations, and connections between the classroom and children's real lives. These are precisely the interaction patterns that score well on Regard for Student Perspectives and Concept Development.
Give your teachers something to talk about
A Little Roads classroom rug puts your school's actual neighborhood on the floor. Real streets, real landmarks, real conversation starters.