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The grey card needs to sit at the middle of your histogram if you are using digital and with either film or digital the reading you get from this needs to be the setting you use on your camera... but you'll need to use a histogram if you are using flash + digital and zoom in to the card which needs to be in your models position.
If you are using flash, you really need a flash meter: again input the settings you get on your camera, but don't forget to adjust the light level or the ISO, or the position of the light, so you get the right ISO and aperture combination (+ synch' speed of course).
Lighting is simple when you know how - and I've done seminars explaining it but it's counter intuitive... many people just set up the lights straight on, even if you tell them not to, but if you want nice tonal gradations you need to put the light 'side on' like a window, so it skims over your subject.
This employs a principle known as the 'rule of squares', where your flash light will fade off from one side to the other, the closer the light the more it will fade in relative terms, so to get a wider range of tonality your light needs to be pretty close to the subject - the further the light is the less 'relative' fall off you get - which is what you need when photographing a group, to get consistency on the faces for example.
As for posing, study great photographers and copy things out of books and magazines for some ideas.
Good luck...
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