Possession of learning

Being brand new to teaching, one could argue that I am always #tryingsomethingnew, but I believe that every person has their tendencies to do what comes naturally to them and I have set out to try the opposite this semester.  I learned very quickly that in order to not spend 5+ hours lesson planning (for one 50 min class), I should take full advantage of the resources that are available to me to use as my starting point.  With that in mind, I prepared my lecture on perception and self with a powerpoint presentation that was in blackbox and was ready to go for the following Monday.
I then did my reading for Pedagogy and decided that I needed to #trysomethingnew.  It was during the chapter about Facilitating Discussion that the original thought came to me and as I read through How to Make Lectures More Effective I became more convinced that my approach to Mondays lecture needed a revamp.  I know myself, and I know that I would not be happy standing at the front of the room going over a distinguished list of the different self concepts and different theories behind perception so I brainstormed. I wanted to apply the thoughts behind how to hold students attention as spoke about in McKeachie and  what I came up with involved calling another TA and bouncing ideas off her to try and work out how best to logistically perform the teaching exercise I had envisioned.
My idea was to break the classroom up in to their CLGs and let the students take possession of learning the material.  The concept was to have all of the different "self" words (i.e. self, self- concept, self- image, etc) up on the walls and then have their definitions scrambled and let each group match word with definition.  We then discussed the answers and debriefed the material.  I did a second slide for the different perception concepts (identity, stand point theory, socially produced selves, etc) and repeated the process.
My 8:00am class worked through the exercise just as I had envisioned, they were animately discussing definitions and bouncing ideas off of one another to come to their group conclusions.  We went through the process as listed above and I felt like the activity went pretty well.  I then used the same exercise in my 9:00am class and as a group project it failed.  During the first slide, the groups did not talk to each other AT ALL, I even said to them "You guys know this is a group exercise right?  Use each other."  Then when we went over the second slide the same thing happened and I said, "You guys are doing it again, you're supposed to be discussing."  Which was met with a, "We're reading." retort.  I was disheartened.  I originally thought that it failed all together because no one was talking in their groups or sharing their thoughts with their group members, but as I'm writing this, I realize that because they weren't talking in their groups does not necessarily mean that the exercise failed all together.  The students in my 9:00 just chose to take individual possession of the learning rather than possession as a group. This point is something to keep in mind for future #trysomethingnew approaches.
My goal was to teach the information in a new format that would hold my students attention and help them learn the material and I think that goal was met.   Each class took possession of their learning in a different way but that is not a bad thing, it was just different than I envisioned it.