<![CDATA[Creative literary literacy among Indonesian elementary school students remains low, particularly in the appreciation of local cultural texts, because literary instruction is rarely connected to the cultural heritage that children experience in daily life. This study therefore designed and tested a Contextual AI-Based Deep Learning (CAIDL) model grounded in Melayu Deli tradition to improve the creative literary literacy of fifth-grade students. Following the five-stage Plomp research and development model, the study involved seven expert validators, 12 students in a small-group trial, three teachers, and 60 fifth-grade students at SDN Medan Deli assigned to an experimental group (n = 30) and a control group (n = 30). Data were collected through expert validation sheets, practicality questionnaires, and a 24-item creative literary literacy test (Cronbach's α = .91). The CAIDL model was rated very valid (88.80%), very feasible (87.08%), and very practical (89.37%). On the posttest, the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group, t(58) = 8.31, p < .001, Cohen's d = 2.14, with a mean N-Gain of 0.582 (medium category); the largest indicator-level effects were found for creative fluency (d = 1.71) and symbolic interpretation (d = 1.68). These findings indicate that integrating Melayu Deli cultural context, Socratic AI scaffolding, and deep learning pedagogy strengthens both the appreciative and the creative dimensions of elementary students' literary literacy and offers a replicable model for culturally grounded literacy instruction.]]>
