This SoTL-driven study used Read Aloud Protocols (RAPs) to explore the question, how do students read assignments? Reading theory suggests that students will draw on schema in order to make sense of what they are reading. This study explored the strategies that students used to read and interpret an assignment and examined the ways that schema contributed to their understanding of the prompt. Participants in a second-year college class focused on interdisciplinary liberal arts read an assignment aloud and articulated their thought processes as they recorded themselves. Results suggest that students limit themselves to the most easily accessible schema rather than reaching for more depth from less immediate schema. This finding has bearing for faculty in how they construct their assignments and the assumptions they make about what students bring to an assignment.