Eye-In_the Sky.
It is worth putting a new student in a simulator for the first two or three lessons of effect of controls, cockpit familiarisation, climbing and descending etc. Part of the content of these sequences is to have the student note the instrument indications. They don't get airsick and are not subject to radio and intercomm instructions coming in their ears. By the time they get into the real aircraft cockpit they are familiar with the controls and instruments and what they do.
In the air, I use the "About Yea" method of attitude flying. First show the student the level flight attitude. Then deliberately hold the nose too high and then same again with the nose too low. Tell him that those are the wrong attitudes - then show him the correct attitude and say "About Yea". It works every time and beats fingers and thumbs.
Low Pass. If you enjoy the "identify flaps" policy, then to be consistent you must get the student to say "identify" when operating other potentially critical levers such as gear lever, mixture lever, pitch lever, magneto switches, etc. After all, the student may just as easily pull the mixture to cut-off instead of closing the throttle on base leg, or select pitch full coarse instead of full fine, or turn off the magneto key to off as part of a forced landing trouble check. Are you going to have him repeat the mantra "Identified" for all those items? Of course not. Where does it all end?
A case in point is the superfluous drill of calling "gear down and locked" as part of the before landing drill on a fixed gear ab-initio aircraft - based upon the supposition that it will prepare the student for the day that he/she will fly a retractable.
To be consistent one must also teach the student to say "Gear up and Locked" after take off in a fixed gear aircraft.
The former drill is universal at some flying schools while the latter drill is unheard off.
I suggest that students should not be taught to mouth by rote, specific system drills that having nothing to do with the aircraft they are currently learning to fly.
Flying school instructors invariably have a plethora of personal drills that they were taught and which due primacy, they will rarely forget - even though those drills are quite irrelevant. They in turn pass these myths down to their students, who, if they become junior instructors, pass the same myths down the line - and so on. Mythical drills are not a factor in the major airlines so why does it happen in general aviation? One of life's mystery's!