One thing: I would suggest that you recommend staying on the System View screen, as that allows you to monitor ship activity, access every window via the top bar, and view events as they occur. The events in particular are important, as they will alert you to everything from research projects completing to ground combat results to new thermal contacts being registered to new leaders being recruited, allowing the player to easily manage every aspect of the empire each turn. A typical turn for me will consist of me running a five day tick, reading the events log (which needs to be switched on from the Display tab on the bottom left), and addressing each point as necessary, opening the proper windows, doing what I need to do, and closing them. The issue with staying on the economics window for most of the time is that you won't notice things happening until you happen to go to a relevant tab or window and realize that something is different, which can radically reduce both your efficiency and your response time to threats.
And to be perfectly fair, I agree with Steve that new players should be instructed to leave Political bonuses and inexperienced fleets (and possible maintenance) off for their first few games, as they essentially do nothing more than pile on additional complexity without actually changing much about the game beyond giving the player more things to micromanage, which really isn't what you need to be doing when you're learning the ropes.