Electronic – What kind of components are these

Unless the application is in a very noisy environment shielding is not required, or really even recommended.

Shielding may be needed in very noisy environments such as some industrial settings but it comes with its own set of problems.

Special attention needs to be paid to ensure that the shield is properly grounded, preferably only on one end of the cable. If both ends are grounded then both systems need to be able to deal with the ground potential offset that will almost certainly exist. In more complicated network topologies this can be a serious issue.

In short, if you don't REALLY need shielding, don't use it.

1. You're using a strange mix of curved, straight and 45° traces. The point is purely aesthetic for a design like this, but I would try to stick to 45° traces.
2. Yes, they're the solder pads.
3. Not if your PCB netlist matches the schematic's.
4. You'll have to choose actual parts first and check the drawings in the datasheet, or, if you have parts already, measure them. This goes especially for the capacitors, resistors are more forgiving about this (though you'll want to use as much as possible the same pitch for them).
5. If you don't want to place a header or connector there I would place them a bit more apart. You can use a 1-pin header as component.

Also try to be consistent with the symbols in your schematic. You mix American resistor symbols with a European potmeter symbol. (Personally, I don't like the American symbol at all; a schematic with lots of resistors IMO looks messy and frenetic, while the same with European symbols radiates rest & relaxation :-)).

edit
A comment on the double-sided board. This is a design that easily can be done on a single layer. It's worth practicing the layout part of your design. You'll learn how just swapping two components may simplify your routing significantly. For instance the red trace from R6 to the IC can be swapped to the other side by simply placing R6 between R4 and C4. Things like that. It will help you later on when you have more complex designs with hundreds of nets. And it can be fun, too. I like this kind of puzzles a lot. It's like playing planarity.
The problem with this double-sided design is that there are pads which are not accessible for soldering, because they're under a component on the component side, like with C3 or M1. If you don't have plated-through holes you can't be sure the wire is properly soldered to the pad. Worse, if the component's package sits on the pad you can almost be certain that there won't be a solder connection between pin and pad.