Q. How to encourage students to share their learning?
Recommendation: Providing them multiple chances to share their thoughts and experience on learning.
Activities:
• During the class: invite volunteers to talk about their perspectives and reflections on learning with their classmates.
• End of class: ask the students to anonymously write down what they think about their learning. Next, ask them to give you what they wrote. Then, randomly read aloud some of the students’ thoughts about learning.
• After the class: join your students after class at school occasionally in order to debrief them and get their opinions and reactions.

Q. How to build up students’ confidence and maintain their identities?
Recommendation: Value each student’s uniqueness, recognize their achievement or progress.
• Value each student as an individual with unique strengths, needs, interests and skills. Show your sincere interest in your students’ activities and hobbies. Don’t publicly compare one student to another.

• Publicly recognize students’ achievements in learning and their uniqueness as a person. For instance, praise your students’ good performance in academic and behavior during morning meeting, and encourage other students to do that.

Q. How to encourage students when they make mistakes or not perform well in tasks?
Recommendation: recognize students’ positive performance, and let them know that everybody can make mistakes.

• Emphasize the positive aspects of students’ behavior or performance, even if the task is not completely successful. Reward direction, not perfection.
• Help students understand that making mistakes in the learning process is inevitable and valuable to their future success. Share with students your own experience of making mistakes or being fail. Also, when students make mistakes, instead of punishing them use these instances as opportunities to teach, providing them with alternative resolutions or suggestions.

Q. How to help students regulate their learning progress?
Recommendation: guide students to use learning portfolio.
• Assist students to make a learning portfolio that contains their academic work, including writing, mathematic, art and other subject works. Use this portfolio to highlight their progress and development when they feel down.

Q. How to motivate students in their learning?
Recommendation: use a variety of material to motivate students, adjust assignment to different levels of learners.
Activities
• Use multiple materials and resources to accommodate different students’ learning styles: use materials such as pictures and videos for visual learners; use music and tape-recordings for audio learners; implement activities and games that will allow physical movement to help facilitate learners’ learning.

• In terms of reaching a higher rate of assignment/task completion, provide two or three types of assignments for students and allow them to choose their preferred one to complete. This should also increase students’ level of engagement in learning.

• Recognize students’ improvement, and assist and encourage them to solve the problems in their learning assignments and projects. Remember to report their achievements and learning progress to their parents.

Q. How to build and enhance students’ prosocial behaviors.
Recommendation: Develop their social responsibility, generosity and guide them to resolve conflicts.
Activities:
• Set learning objectives of social responsibility for students. Assist students in identifying social norms in the classrooms so they will be more aware that their behavior will usually be regulated by the norms of the location where they are.
• Recognize and support students’ generosity, classroom cooperativeness and helping behaviors. Put their recognized prosocial behaviors in the weekly newsletter and give a copy to their parents.
• Set clear rules and expectations about how to respond appropriately to peer victimization. Provide more opportunities for students to discuss and practice proactive strategies, to help them resolve peer conflicts (e.g., guide students to identify and define the conflict, invite them to participate in dealing with conflict, and work together to generate possible solutions).

Q. How to make your students believe that entering college and university is achievable to them?
Recommendations: Let your students know the benefits of going to college; make college accessible to them by taking them to campus tours and setting role models.
Activities:
• Help your students understand the benefits of going to college. For instance, they will likely to find their preferred career path, they will build social networking by communicating with students and alumni, and this will lead to more job opportunities.
• Help students take a college campus tour and participate in summer programs in nearby colleges.
• Invite your previous students who have successfully been admitted to college to share their college experience and suggestions for applying to college.

Q. How to help your students with college/university application?
Recommendations: Assist your students to set goals and go over the requirement for college application.
Activities:
• Help your students set realistic goals for applying to one specific college. If appropriate, show them how and where to search for possible scholarships or financial aid.
• Help your students search for and review the profile and enrollment application of any college that interests them; go over the requirements for different universities/ colleges and encourage them to set goals and achieve them.

Q. What are the four levels of feedback that should be given to students?
Recommendations: The four levels are task level, process level, self-regulation level and self level.
Activities:
• Level 1 – Task Level: Feedback should give guidance as to how well the task has been performed; is it correct or incorrect.
• Level 2 – Process Level: Feedback should give guidance as to the strategies and approach needed to perform the task; what alternate strategies and approaches are there.
• Level 3 – Self-Regulation Level: Feedback should give guidance as to what pre-existing knowledge is needed for a student to be able to master material; students should have a clear understanding of how they can monitor their progress as they move along .
• Level 4 – Self Level: Feedback should provide guidance, so the student can evaluate their own progress regarding the concrete and affective aspects of moving towards mastery.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of educational research, 77(1), 81-112.