Wareham Cooperative School students can prove that the chicken came before the egg.

On a patch of land nestled between the cooperative school and the high school track is a chicken coop with six chickens the school bought with grant money from a hatchery in Pennsylvania.

Students came to school Monday morning to find that one of the six chickens bought over the winter had finally laid an egg.

"Students get to learn where their food actually comes from. It doesn't just appear on the shelf at Shaw's," said Jeff Egger, teacher at Wareham Cooperative School.

Middle- and early high-school students who have fallen behind in classes are given a second chance in the Cooperative School day program, which is designed to determine the reasons students are struggling, and help them catch up and complete their work before they're retained a grade.

Egger said the idea for the chickens came from a student who wanted to fund a field trip to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Other students had seen a woman who sells eggs near the YMCA and Egger, who has raised chickens at his home with his family, applied for a grant in October.

Egger said seventh, eighth and ninth grade students researched how the chickens were raised and what the associated costs would be and then developed ideas on how to sell them. He said they would also like to donate some of the eggs to a local food pantry.

In the future, Egger plans to use a shed next to the temporary coop and then refurbish and connect the nearby dilapidated greenhouse to create a much larger and nicer chicken coop and run.

He also said he would like to add some chicks in the fall, this way the kids can really nurture them from birth and make a connection with them.

"They really almost become pets," he said.

Some students have already given names to many of the chickens and have invented personalities for them.

"So many of the kids have never been exposed to something like this," Egger said. "It gives them a chance to act like kids, which a lot of them never had the opportunity to do."