A normal Thursday morning turned into a big surprise for Summer Chance’s second-graders at Horizon Elementary School.

The Madison youngsters received the Earth Day Heroes Award. “Earth Day Heroes was started by our company, One Stop Environmental, this year to educate students on small ways they can help the planet that would make a big impact,” marketing director Elizabeth Hinson said.

In addition, the contest informed students of ways to help the environment, as well as give them the chance to share their own ideas of how they pledge to help the planet in 2012 and win prizes for their classroom, Hinson said.

Several classrooms at Horizon Elementary participated in this year’s contest by making pledges to help the planet. For two weeks, voting was open on Facebook to select a winner.

Chance’s class created a drawing, “Putting the Earth Back Together.” The artwork showed each student’s idea of how they will help the planet this year.

“Everyone in our second-grade class brainstormed ways they could be an ‘Earth Day Hero,'” Chance said. “They each chose one of their many ideas and made a pledge to do at least one of them to help save the Earth.”

Chance incorporated the word ‘pledge’ into their vocabulary list. “Students know that they are making a promise to put our Earth back to the way it was supposed to be — even if it is one piece at a time. What makes our poster special is that every student in our class contributed to the poster,” Chance said.

The Horizon second-graders won a pizza party, field trip to see Disney Nature’s Earth Day movie, “Chimpanzee,” and a Samsung Galaxy tablet. The Verizon Wireless — Huntsville Call Center co-sponsored the contest.

National Earth Day will be celebrated on April 22.