Now that "power for speed" thing I find very strange. I had a BFR student who was trained by an instructor from the UK who embraced the same philosophy. On take off trundling along at 10 knots below Vy I asked for more speed and they replied "I've already got full power"...like duh, its not a car...lower the nose!!
In the old days (30 years ago) every approach for students in the USA was a glide approach. Not anymore. Pitch for speed and power for altitude. We teach power reduction abeam touch down point on downwind; initially hold the nose level to let airspeed bleed off to initial approach speed, then keep the nominated "stabilised approach" speed all the way to the threshold.
I have always found it hard to judge height from visual references until final. I teach lose about 200' on the latter part of downwind, about 300' on base and the last 500' on final.
The trick for final is to keep the airspeed constant and keep the runway threshold in a little "box" 1/3 of the way up the windscreen. I tell the students to imagine a little box about 15 cm x 10 cm drawn in magic marker on the windscreen. Pitch for airspeed and power to keep it in the box - works every time.
