Right now you're probably thinking I need to start doing some past papers and you would be right because past papers are the most beneficial things you can do. However there's only a limited number of past papers you can do that will fit your current specification. As in there's only a limited number you can do until you get to pre-2018 which is like the old specification.
So this is exactly the method I use to make each past paper count and maximise the benefits of doing them. This is gonna sound crazy but before I even started physics revision I did the 2018 post paper. and this was to set like a groundwork this is like this is how much i already know now it turned out my foundation was pretty good because i got 86 based on literally just having done my mark but obviously room for improvement so i'm going to break this down into two parts what to do during the paper and what to do after the paper first of all you will never ever ever want to be doing a past paper not in time condition that's just not realistic and it's not going to help you come up with these answers on the spot past papers train your knowledge as well as your your exam technique. So if your exam technique is You taking forever on these questions because you think, oh, it's just revision at home. No.
As you're doing these questions, you want to be circling questions with topics that you're a bit unsure on and circling questions that you found a bit harder. This way, when you're marking them, you have kind of a record of your thought process and how you responded to the paper while you were doing it. Then obviously you're going to mark your paper. But what you're not going to do is you're not going to mark passably.
If you lose a mark, you need to get curious. You need to look at the mark scheme and in another colour, you're going to explain to yourself why you didn't get that mark. Now after this, you're going to make a little list of topics that you think you need to revise after doing that paper.
I have mentioned these before, but what you're then going to do is you're going to take any information on the mark scheme that you didn't know or you didn't manage to get in your answers and you're going to put it onto this summary sheet. This sheet is basically everything you get wrong and everything you don't understand. I repeat, it's not a summary sheet of the whole topic. It's a summary sheet of what you don't have in your brain.
This is going to allow you to target specific points that you didn't manage to get in your answer and specific bits of knowledge that you don't understand. Because sometimes the mark scheme is going to have points on there that don't necessarily fit into any of the spec points but are necessary for your answer to be correct. What you're then going to do is you're going to take any question that you got wrong and you're going to make a flashcard out of it. So literally the question is going to be the question on the paper and the answer is going to be the mark scheme. This way, closer to exams, you can have a method of actively recalling all the stuff you've gotten wrong in the past.
This is the method I used every time I do a past paper and every time I do a past paper I get a better mark.