I too believe that a student needs to have a basic understanding of how the airplane flies and how you control the airplane through pitch, roll, and yaw axis......You can see the understanding in their faces when they now understand why you need up elevator in a turn......
I tell the student before the flight what the objective is...such as we will work on level turns today......after the flight I ask the student to tell me what he thought he did wrong first...always wrong first...then what he thought he did right....then I tell him what I think he needs to work on...then what he did right....right always last.....I always leave the student with what he did right last...positive re-enforcement.....if we fly 3 or 4 flights in a day we do this 3 or 4 times......
I teach in this order....level turns, both left and right...taxi, takeoff....both ways, left and right....then we start approaches getting lower and lower until he lands.....then rudder....
To keep it fun we'll do some loops and rolls depending on the student maybe some spins...just before they solo all students work on stall, and unusal attitude recovery.
I only group students in 2 catogories...those that will be good pilots and those that won't be so good pilots....you can move up in catogries never down....That seems like a harsh comment but to those that have taught for a while, know what I mean