You don't always have 2000 feet or more to make your decision. There are a lot of places where airspace restrictions force you down to below 1500 feet. In those cases you'd better have a quick look around, select a field and then make the best of it. 1000 feet is not enough to set up a normal circuit, particularly not if you want to try some restart drills too. Unless you're in a motorglider.
Ultimately, what an instructor wants to see is that you make the best use of the available altitude/time you have to perform whatever tasks are necessary (restart drills, positioning for a field, mayday call, passenger briefing, whatever) and that you possess the handling/judging skills to arrive at the near edge of the field in the proper configuration and with the proper speed to do a short/soft field landing.
How you do that is your own responsibility, although various instructors do drill in a certain sequence of actions. But may I kindly suggest that setting best *glide* speed before you have chosen your field is a bit of a waste of time and altitude. Until you've selected a place where you want to go, it's best to select best *endurance* speed, which is a few knots slower.