Working in Groups

I recently assigned my first group project to my students. I split up the reading, "Preface and the New Civil Rights", by Ken Yoshino, into four sections, then broke the class into groups of four as follows:

Group 1: Shayna, Luis, Elly, Stephanie P. Please read "Preface"
Group 2: Moira, Brenda, Gio, Samantha N. Please read from page 541 ("The New Civil Rights") to 543 (end with "...'brothers' of other nations")

Group 3: A.J., Natasha, Elida, Alyssa. Please read from 543 ("The universal rights...") to 545 ("...not my healthiest impulse")

Group 4: Hanna, Mikayla, Stephanie G., Samantha C. Please read 545 ("Law is also an incomplete...") to the end.

I assigned this project as follows:
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I have split this reading up into four sections. The groups listed below are assigned the sections as follows. Each group will be responsible for defining unfamiliar words, summarizing key points, and sharing quotes they find really reflect the author's purpose/writing. Each group will share these ideas in class on Tuesday, after some time working together. I am setting up a Moodle forum for each group -- please contribute BY MONDAY AFTERNOON as this will really help with the in-class work.

And then later in the week...
Continue your Moodle forum discussions over the next couple of days, so that you are prepared, as a group, to share your section of the reading on Tuesday, 9/27/16. Each group will be given about 10 minutes to present their section.
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Discussion in the Moodle forums I set up was... okay. They all posted, but there wasn't quite the give-and-take with responses I was hoping for. I did give them some further advice as well as part of their continuing in-class and Moodle discussions:
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Each group will be given about 10 minutes to present their section. Consider the following as you work:

1. What roles do you want everyone to take on in sharing with the class? Do you want to split the load between paragraphs, ideas, or have some people handle ideas, others vocabulary, etc.? How do you want to share the information you've read?

2. What are the main ideas in your section?
3. Is there any unfamiliar vocabulary, or unusual terminology?
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Finally, we got to presentation day, and again it went... okay. Each group did meet the basic criteria of the assignment, but there wasn't a lot of expansion.

I think for future assignments, I need to be more directive.