Jessica Parnell

Hi, need help identifying this long lost film. Saw this movie about 35/40 years ago. It's in b/w and was probably made in the 1950's or 60's, or possibly earlier. It's about a group of school children and they're putting on a school play (possibly a religious play like Jesus and the Manger or something like that) and during the course of this one of the little girls in the class becomes very sick and ends up dying near the end of the film, and it affects one of her classmates (a young boy) who was kind of in love with her.