Even though the scripts are written in the present tense, I advise that you create the story with the kids in the past tense. This is a point of major discussion (and contention) in the TPRS community. I am giving my opinion here that we must ask the story in the past tense and write it in the present based on fifteen years of intense field research into the topic. I stand by it even if it seems counterintuitive. Step 2 is done in the past and Step 3 in the present. Of course, the reader is entitled to their own opinion, but that is mine. In the long run, the kids learn both tenses better and faster this way. (The past tense dominates much of spoken and written language, and because it has many forms, especially the dominant perfect and imperfect forms, it should get lots of attention from us in our CI classrooms. We certainly don’t learn tenses in any kind of “order”.)
Related: https://benslavic.com/blog/question-on-use-of-verb-tenses/