By Ayush Patel | Staff Writer

Members of Irvington High School’s CORE Club began tutoring elementary kids at Hirsch Elementary School and James Lietch Elementary School through workbooks and Lexia, an online program, in order to help improve elementary students’ English skills.

According to sophomore Lucas Melo, CORE is planning an upcoming event with Interact, in which more information will be released in the future. In addition, CORE will hold a few meetings throughout the next few months in order to wrap gifts for the students.

President Rachel Castellino stated that she has various desires for CORE Club.

“Our goal in the club is to help kids, particularly first or second graders who don’t receive the deserving amount of help they need for schoolwork at home,” explained Castellino. “Every session we hope to improve their vocabulary, reading, and writing skills.”

Castellino hopes that the volunteers will gain skills from this club as well.

“I hope that tutors see how easy it is to help someone in school no matter how young the age and also that working with kids isn’t that intimidating,” Castellino said. “Tutors will hopefully have a chance to enjoy helping kids with their schoolwork and at the end of the school year feel like they made a difference in one kid’s education.”

Volunteers either walk or drive to one of the two elementary schools, each Thursday from 3 to 4 p.m.

During the homecoming spirit week, CORE club hosted its own spirit carnival. There was a booth in which students played games in order to receive candy.

“It was [very] fun to see people and have them play games,” said Melo, who ran the booth. “I was very surprised that we had a lot of people; we actually ran out of hi-chew. We had people coming in all the time and long lines which was fun because everyone was there and interacting.”