To cultivate students' mathematical literacy, we should not only master the necessary mathematical knowledge and skills, but also improve students' mathematical learning ability and pay attention to cultivating students' mathematical concepts and qualities. Influenced by the traditional exam-oriented education, primary school mathematics teachers have insufficient understanding of the concept and connotation of mathematical literacy and how to cultivate students' mathematical literacy, which leads to some misunderstandings in cultivating students' mathematical literacy in specific classroom teaching. The following is the introduction: (1) equate mathematical literacy with mathematical skills. Many math teachers believe that to improve the quality of math teaching, we must rely on systematic and solid mechanical training, so that practice makes perfect. Only in this way can we improve students' math skills and math literacy. This view does not fully realize the true connotation of mathematical literacy. A lot of daily training can really improve students' problem-solving level and make them master the corresponding mathematical skills, but it will also limit the development of students' mathematical thinking to a certain extent and it is difficult to achieve the goal of cultivating students' mathematical literacy. (2) It is considered that the content of teaching materials is selective when cultivating mathematical literacy.