This study analyses how older (mostly 60 years or over) women who are literacy students at Youth and Adult Education Program in a small village of Brazil appropriate school numeracy practices during a class about the discursive genre "label" and the information it conveys. We focus on the students' participation in the discursive interactions that take place in events involving concepts, ideas, procedures, rules, and values related to reading and registering the system used to write expiration dates. Using an example, we discuss how the different modes of this appropriation carried out by the students change the didactical activity and innovatively forge the pedagogical relationship.