Grading/Not Grading Midterm Conferences

Last year, when I was still teaching high school, I moved to grade conferences for all my classes. I still had to report grades, but the students and I came up with the list of things assignments should include together, and based on that they told me what grade they thought their work deserved and why. We talked about "C"s including the basic requirements, and there was above and less than. Students could always revise for a higher grade, and we focused on feedback more than the grades. Most of my students said it made them uncomfortable, but they grew to like it.
Last semester, my first teaching here, for my upper level classes I did the same, grade conferencing for assignments based on made-together checklists of what the assignment should include. For composition we grade conferences over their three major writing assignments, and each major writing assignment had two low stakes assignments that built up to them. The low stakes assignments were 75% of their grade, the major writing assignments and writing portfolio were 25%.

This semester I wanted to build on this and push further. So for the composition class we still do the low stakes assignments but they're not graded. They have three major writing assignments and their final portfolio are each 25%. Students still brainstorm the list of what the genre should include, and then tell me during grade conferences what grade they think their work should get and why. They can still revise if they want. A C meets the minimum, a D is work turned in but didn't do what was asked, an F means nothing turned in. As and Bs show revision, creativity, outside the box. These are not ideal things to dump grades entirely, but the composition courses under our general education label have a lot of requirements I'm conforming to.
We are required to post midterm and final grades in Banner, so that's the basic (other than GE for composition) requirements I have.
By the time we meet next week for midterm conferences they will have turned in two of their major writing assignments. Their midterm conferences are really more of a check in. How are you doing, what can I do. We'll talk about the grade they have now, how they feel about that, if they think it's accurate, plan moving forward for the rest of the semester.
For my upper level classes, they have their writer's notebooks which are 50% of their grade and their unessay/final papers which are 50 % of their grade. So for their midterm conferences they will show me the work they're most proud of in their writer's notebooks and present a proposal for their unessay project/final paper. They'll tell me what grade they think I should post in Banner and why.

With all of this, I reserve the right the push back if I think the grade they tell me is not reflective of the work they've done, but I try to focus on what they're doing/not doing, quality of work, feedback to improve, move forward.

Midterm Grade Conferences
I cancel classes the week of midterms because I know students have a lot of classes they actually have midterms for, and may need to study for. However, they sign up for a conference time to come see me. I have snacks in my office, and I try to make it an informal situation. To help them, I made guide sheets about how to prep.

• Composition II
• fairly basic, focus is more on how they are, if there's anything I can do
• History of the English Language/Gender and Literature
• for these classes the students pick a theme or big idea that they want to focus on, and choose 5 pages out of their notebook that shows their best work on that
• Research Methods and Capstone
• since the capstone class is producing a lot of professional documents their list is quite a bit longer for the stuff they're supposed to be working on

I'm interested to see how these changes/revisions work.