Katie Soong
Katie Soong of Homewood recently completed her Gold Award for the Girl Scouts of America. The Gold Award is the highest honor awarded in Girl Scouting.
Katie has been a member of Troop 350 in Avondale since kindergarten. She enjoys working with children, so her Gold Award project focused on promoting literacy with elementary school children at the I3 Academy in Woodlawn.
Katie researched ways to engage children and boost their connection with reading. One idea she latched onto was to help children create a home library. This has been found to have very positive effects in the long term. She was able to collect over 2,000 books for the project through fundraising anddonations of gently used books. The books were sorted and given to kindergartners and fourthgraders at I3 Academy at a reading celebration. Each child received a box of 50 books to take home and start a home library.
Katie also read to and led literacy activities in class for a week. She established a connection with the school librarian to promote the use of the school library, public library and neighborhood Little Free Library in front of the school. The children can exchange their books as needed and hopefully keep books available in the neighborhood.
“I loved being with the kids and seeing how excited they got about reading,” Katie said as the project concluded. Katie is very thankful for all the help she received from so many in our community. She is grateful to Rachel Estes, Koko McCall and Sarah Wessel for their encouragement and said it was key to her completing the project.
Katie is the daughter of Weily and Lauri Soong. She is a senior at The Altamont School where she is active in the theater and is on the varsity tennis team. In the summer she enjoys working as a lifeguard at The Fresh Air Farm in Bluff Park.
-Submitted by Lauri Soong
