These are the steps you might take to complete this project. There's no right way to make an Express app -- nor any other app.
This walkthrough gets you up to the point of having an app that renders in the browser, makes database queries, and has AJAX -- but is still very bare-bones. The examples below use a "Movie" model, but that can be replaced with anything else.
We strongly recommend that you use the "drive/steer" pairing model on this: only one computer is open, with only one person working on it, while another person directs them and tells them what to type.