On Friday afternoon as fifth-grader Sophie Appel and a fellow student spoke to their peers about an upcoming Pennies for Patients fundraiser that would soon be starting, she had absolutely no idea that she was about to have the surprise of her life.

As the Pennies for Patients announcement wrapped up, the door to the room opened and in walked a woman carrying flowers and balloons. Confusion set in as Sophie returned to her seat, perplexed. SIFMA's Elizabeth Reidel took the floor and began speaking as the entire student body sat and watched, equally as perplexed. Fifth-grade teacher Jim Gemma began filming with his camera as Reidel began to speak.

"This is one of my favorite schools to visit," she told the students. "Since the early 2000s, I think I've been to Rhodes Elementary School 10 times to announce the first-place winner for Rhode Island for the fall InvestWrite competition."

Reidel went on to explain that she is with the SIFMA foundation that sponsors the Stock Market Game each year, a game in which Gemma's class participates in during the fall months.

"We have a goal of teaching kids starting in the fourth grade and up, all the way to college, how to take your allowance and your birthday money and instead of spending it all, learning how to have it work for you. You might want to use it to help pay for college, to buy a car or to buy a house. When I was your age, I played the Stock Market Game, that's how long I've been around."

She told the students that in 2004 the program was expanded to include a writing contest, which would help the students to show that they could apply what they had learned in the game to real life situations.

"For everything in life, you have to be able to write, to express yourself, to think critically using economic concepts," Reidel said. "For the fall of 2016 we had 7,000 students participate from across the United States, 3,000 were high school students, and 2,000 were elementary school students. We had 2,000 industry professionals from the financial services industry who served as the judges."

Reidel explained to the students that those who entered the contest had to provide a well thought out written answer to the following prompt: Choose a corporation that started out as a sole proprietorship or a partnership. The corporation may or may not be from your Stock Market Game portfolio. Provide a brief summary about the founding of the business. When did the sole proprietor or partners choose to become a corporation and sell shares of stock? Have they issued bonds? Is the corporation's stock included in mutual funds? Would you recommend the stock, bond or mutual fund of this corporation as a long-term investment? Why or why not? Remember to do your research and cite your sources.

Once Reidel finished sharing the writing prompt, she began to describe the winner, as they had been described by their parents, and it was then that Sophie Appel and her fellow classmates began to truly realize what was happening as Reidel described a student who was an avid reader, someone who liked singing and dancing and had recently appeared onstage in Trinity Rep's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," someone who was an upbeat, energetic child who always thinks she's older than she actually is.

With that Sophie Appel began to smile.

Reidel shared some of Sophie's essay, which focused on the social media site, Facebook, an excerpt from which is shared here:

"With Facebook's popularity rising like a hot sun out of the east, and all its competitors like MySpace [an opposing company who became less popular during Facebook's uprising] losing the battle, a lot of things happened at once: they needed to hire more employees, keep them paid, and they needed more money. And since advertisement was their only source of income, they needed cash. Therefore, Facebook, only eight years old, was transformed from a privately-owned company to a public one. This eventful milestone occurred on May 18, 2012. The company raised $16 billion through the offering- a huge sum! Seeing how we are considering the future, let me be your financial advisor. I would strongly recommend buying shares of Facebook. Over the past four years, Facebook has gone up 215%! So, what do you think? Good long-term investment or not? And was it worthwhile? Yes and yes! But if you're still not sure, let me give you some more reasons. Every month, Facebook has 1.71 billion users. Additionally, it reels in plentiful amounts of money from its ads and from the stock market itself. In fact, in 2013, its net income was $1.5 billion!"

As Sophie's parents, Carrie and Jason Appel appeared from behind the stage curtains, Sophie ran up to the stage area and hugged them both as the student body cheered and clapped.

Reidel presented her with a trophy and medal, and presented Gemma with this year's banner to add to his vast collection from years past. Appel was given a $100 American Express gift card, and will be invited to the May awards ceremony. Additionally, Gemma was honored with a gift card and Carrie Appel was presented with flowers, a token gift for having kept the secret for several weeks, along with her husband.

Finally, Reidel presented Appel with a notebook.

"We have a spring semester essay competition too, and it's going on right now, so here is a notebook for you to use to write another essay," she said.

When asked if she was surprised, Appel stated that she was extremely surprised, not having any idea at all until Reidel began to describe her and to read the essay she'd written, as she was the only child in the class to choose Facebook for her essay.

Gemma was happy for his student, stating that Sophie is always willing to listen to the advice she is given in regards to her work in class.

"She follows all constructive criticism," he said. "She just takes it and runs with it."