Last week I got an email from Waitsburg fifth grade teacher, Gabe Kiefel, explaining that his class had collaborated to write a pollution essay that they were very proud of and wanted to see if we could run it in The Times.

When I got the go-ahead from the big boss (aka Editor Ken Graham), Kiefel asked if I’d like to visit the class so they could explain their writing process to me. I did, and it was a lot of fun.

The students explained that they first watched a video on pollution and then worked together on an outline. One young writer commented that it took a lot of “arguing” (or collaboration) to reach a consensus.

They color-coded the outline to denote paragraph subjects and highlighted topic sentences and conclusions and Kiefel typed it into paragraphs. They were pleased to inform me that their teacher was overconfident, declaring that he could write the paper up in five minutes, when it actually took “16 minutes and 31 seconds.” These guys are sticklers for accuracy.

With the first draft complete, the class spent two days editing their work. “It took a long, long, time,” said student Alex Dahlby.

When they finished explaining their process I asked them where in the paper they thought their essay should go. Several agreed that it was definitely front-page worthy. That’s where the important news that affects everyone goes, they explained; and pollution definitely affects everyone.

While I couldn’t argue that, I did explain the difference between a news story and commentary and, since they said they definitely had an opinion, we agreed it would probably be commentary.

However, if I included a story on the class writing the essay, along with the actual essay, it could be news . . . and commentary.

(Which is part of why I’m writing this as a column instead of a “story.” Now we can consider it all commentary.)

I’m not sure if the kids completely understood the differences, but they were definitely interested and I know they’ll be watching for the “big capital” at the start of the article, denoting it as an opinion piece and not ” news.”

I should also note that they are extremely passionate about their subject matter. Thier column is at right.