Past papers are the most underused - or wrongly used - revision resource out there.
I want to make this very clear - past papers are your golden ticket to a top grade.
If you do not use them, or you leave them to the last few weeks before your exams, you will be very unlikely to get a topic grade.
I know you probably think you don’t know enough yet to attempt a paper - this is no excuse - if this is true you can and SHOULD still be doing exam questions by topic through the year.
If you follow these steps I guarantee you will improve your grade. I know that may sound bold - but that is how confident I am!
Here are my steps to boost your grade using past papers today.
Step 1 - Do a past paper (or pack of past paper questions by topic)
This is a simple first step - I want you find a past paper, or questions by topic pack, print them if you can, but if you can’t get to work from your laptop - we don’t want obstacles in our way.
Now attempt this paper like you are sitting an exam - I don’t want you to be half-hearted. Even the questions that you feel you have no idea about I want you to really try and write something down - just like you will in the real thing.
Step 2 - Mark your work
This step is absolutely vital. You have to mark your work so that you can see what you know and what you don’t. The sooner we can face this the better because we can get to work on improving it!
Step 3 - Record your score
So many students don’t do this. I strongly encourage you do so that you can monitor your progress. I promise you when you start seeing your score go up you will become addicted and it will encourage you to study more as you will see yourself getting the results you want.
Step 4 - Use the mark scheme to make notes
This is the step people miss - and if you miss it all the work you have done has been in vain. Why? Because you will walk away from this paper and anything you couldn’t do when you started this paper - you still won’t be able to do when you open the next paper.
The whole point of this process is to find what you don’t know and fix it.
So if this was a Maths paper and you forgot some key maths rules - now is the time to stick them on a flash card.
Science subject? All those key definitions or common questions you got stuck on? These need to go on a flash card.
The most powerful thing about this, particularly for science, is that the mark schemes tell us exactly what the examiners want. The mark scheme is brief and to the point and you will see exactly what key words you need to know.
Step 5 - Learn the facts you didn’t know!
Make sure you prioritise learning any facts that led to you making mistakes in the past paper/ questions by topic. You need to make these top priority as this process diagnosed your problem - you now know what you don’t know - take the medicine for the problem and focus on learning all the facts you used the mark scheme to make notes from.
Step 6 - Do exam questions on the topics you got wrong
Let’s now do so active work to put what we have just learn into practice. This will clear up any gaps and stop you repeating those mistakes.
Step 7 - Repeat
Once you have really worked on the questions you got wrong, learnt the key facts you didn’t know before and successfully answered questions on these topics it is now time to go back to the start!
Get your next past paper or question pack out and repeat this process.
I absolutely guarantee this will improve your grade - just don’t skip any of these steps.
Let me know how you get on! If you have any questions - or top tips of your own - I would love to hear them!