Drop Bucket Widget

Drop bucket is for categorization. Learners move draggable items into a target container and you decide what counts as correct and when correctness is shown.

The drop bucket is the only widget that can receive a drop. Any widget you want learners to drop things into is a bucket — style it to suit the scene, including a transparent fill and no label if it should sit invisibly over artwork.

Whether an item snaps back after being pulled out is set on the draggable, not the bucket — see Revert to Position in Draggable Widget.

Settings to know

Select the bucket and click the ⚙ Configure button to open its setup panel. The answer key and the feedback setting live there, side by side with a live preview. The bucket's Text label and its styling (colors, outlines) stay in the right sidebar under Style & Layout.

In the Configure panel's Content section:

• Feedback controls when the bucket tints its border to show correctness. _Immediate_ colours it as items land. _On Trigger_ holds that back until a Submit grades the bucket.
• Correct draggables is the answer key: tick the items that belong in this bucket.
• This bucket is correct when… sets how strict that answer key is:
• _Everything matches_ — every ticked item is in the bucket, and nothing else is.
• _At least one_ — one ticked item is enough; extra items don't break it.
• _Exactly one_ — a single item is in the bucket, and it's a ticked one.

Correct when stays visible even with Scoring off, because the border tint follows it too.

The border always agrees with Correct when, so learners never see a colour that disagrees with their score:

• Green the moment the bucket's rule is satisfied. Under _At least one_, that means one correct item turns it green even with extra items alongside.
• Red only under _Everything matches_, and only once an item that doesn't belong is in the bucket — a mistake the learner can already see and undo.
• No tint while the answer is still open: an empty bucket, a partly filled one, or any bucket the learner could still fix by adding or removing an item. A learner mid-sort isn't told they're wrong for not having finished.

There is no slot count to set, and no cap on how many items a learner can drop in. The bucket arranges whatever it holds automatically, based on its own shape:

• A wide bucket lays its items out in one row.
• A tall bucket stacks them in one column.
• A square bucket fills a grid — 4 items land 2x2, 9 land 3x3.

So you size and shape the bucket on the canvas and the arrangement follows. To change how items sit, resize the bucket.

In the sidebar (Style & Layout):

• Text is optional. If you leave it blank, the bucket does not show placeholder text. It appears while the bucket is empty, in both the studio and the lesson.
• Correct / Incorrect Feedback Color set the border colours used when Feedback shows correctness.

Grading setup

Drop bucket supports grading. The grading options live in the Scoring section of the ⚙ Configure panel; what counts as correct is set in Content (above).

• Scoring (the On/Off switch at the top of the section) turns grading on or off for the bucket.
• The widget's name is the readable label for this answer in results and conditions. Rename it at the top of the properties panel — see Widgets and widget settings.
• Points sets how much the bucket is worth. A bucket earns all its points once its Correct when rule is met, or none — there is no credit per item.
• While Scoring is on, the bucket counts toward both the scene score and the lesson score.
• Group lets you include the bucket in a custom grading group.

Once a Submit grades the bucket, its answer is final: it won't take new items, and the items in it can't be dragged back out.

How to set up the content

Build the bucket only after you know which draggable widgets belong in it. Use Correct draggables to define the exact items that count as correct for that bucket.

Use the draggable widget's Valid Targets setting to decide which buckets it can be dropped into. A learner cannot drop a draggable into a bucket unless that bucket is selected as a valid target.

Ticking an item in Correct draggables now takes care of that for you: when you Save the Configure panel, every item in the answer key is allowed to land in this bucket — and in the scene's other buckets too, so learners can still put it in the wrong place and find out. You only need Valid Targets by hand for buckets an item should reach _without_ being correct there.

The quicker way: draw the connection

You can skip both lists. Select a draggable on the canvas, then drag from the violet link badge in the middle of it onto this bucket. That marks the item correct for the bucket and keeps every other bucket droppable, so learners can still answer wrong. Full details in Draggable Widget.

Select or hover the bucket to see lines from every draggable that belongs in it — a fast way to check an answer key before you publish.

If publishing reports "Correct Answer Can't Be Dropped"

That check means a bucket names an item as correct, but the item isn't allowed to land there — so a learner could never place the right answer. It usually shows up in older lessons, or ones drafted by the AI assistant, that were built before the two settings were kept in step.

To fix it, open the named draggable and add the bucket to its Valid Targets, or drag the draggable's link badge onto the bucket.

If publishing reports "Buckets Share a Correct Answer"

An item can only sit in one bucket at a time. If it is a correct answer in two scored buckets, those buckets can never both be right, so no learner can get the scene fully correct. Keep each item correct in just one bucket — for an item that genuinely fits two categories, give the second bucket its own copy of the item.

If publishing reports "Correct Answer Is Missing"

The bucket's answer key still names an item that isn't a draggable on the scene. Items you delete, switch out of drag mode, or leave behind when you copy the bucket to another scene are removed from the key automatically, so this is rare — it mostly affects a bucket on a shared layout. Open the bucket's ⚙ Configure panel and untick the row marked Missing item.

Useful setting combinations

• Immediate feedback + a wide bucket:

Best for a short sort where learners should see the bucket turn green as soon as it's right, and red under _Everything matches_ as soon as an item that doesn't belong lands in it.

• Feedback on trigger:

Best when a Submit button should check the whole categorization at once, with no hints along the way.

• Multiple buckets + draggable image cards:

Best for sorting examples into categories. Step-by-step, with see-through buckets laid over photos: Sort animal pictures into their habitats.

• One small square bucket per position, each with one correct item:

Best when order matters, like spelling a word from letter tiles. Add one extra item that's allowed in every bucket and correct in none, so learners can't just use up every tile. Step-by-step: Build a word from letter tiles.

Strong use cases

• Sort examples into categories like "renewable" and "nonrenewable".
• Place vocabulary into parts of speech groups.
• Sort evidence into "supports claim" and "does not support claim".
• Label a diagram: one small bucket at the end of each line, and a word card for each part. Step-by-step: Drag labels onto the parts of a diagram.
• Fill in a Venn diagram: two overlapping see-through circles drawn with shapes, and one tall see-through bucket in each part, so two facts stack instead of shrinking side by side. Step-by-step: Compare frogs and toads with a Venn diagram.

Great pairings with other widgets

• Pair a drop bucket with text widgets used as draggables.
• Pair it with image widgets as visual sort items.
• Pair it with button when feedback should wait until the learner finishes sorting.
• Pair it with score to show the points earned. Each bucket earns all its points once its Correct when rule is met, or none, so the score counts buckets, not individual items.