To revise using past papers, do them first and make the video second. Download four or five years of papers with their mark schemes and examiner reports from your exam board, sit at least one under timed conditions, then tally which questions repeat. Each repeat question becomes one chapter of a revision video: the question and its marks, a pause to answer out loud, the answer in the mark scheme's exact wording, and the mistake the examiner report says most students made. A topic usually comes to five to eight chapters and five to eight minutes. The video drills the patterns; the papers stay the main event.

Three documents, three jobs

Most students use past papers by doing one, checking the answers, and moving on. That throws away most of what the exam boards publish. There are three documents for each paper, and each one tells you something different.

AQA, Pearson Edexcel and OCR publish all three for GCSE and A level on their websites. Cambridge publishes a selection of past papers, mark schemes and examiner reports for IGCSE and International AS and A Level, with the full archive on its School Support Hub for registered schools. The newest series is often kept back for schools to use as mocks before it goes public, so your teacher may have papers you cannot download yet. Ask.

The examiner report is the one nobody reads, and it is the most useful. It is written by the people who marked thousands of scripts, and it says plainly what went wrong. A sentence like "many candidates stated that the particles collide more, without reference to frequency" is a free mark for you.

Tally the papers before you write anything

Spread four or five years of papers for one topic across a desk, or open them side by side. For each question on your topic, note the year, the command word, the marks and what it was really asking. Patterns show up quickly.

Here is the kind of tally you might get for rates of reaction in a GCSE chemistry course. The rows are illustrative, not copied from a specific board's papers; yours will differ in detail, but the shape is typical.

That table is your chapter list, already ranked. The top rows get a chapter each. The one-mark question about units becomes a single sentence inside the gradient chapter. Anything that never appeared in five years is not cut from your revision, but it is cut from this video.

Anatomy of a chapter

Every chapter follows the same four beats. The repetition is deliberate: after three chapters you start answering in that shape without thinking.

1. The question, with marks. Said aloud and shown as a short label. "Explain why increasing the temperature increases the rate of reaction. Four marks."
2. The pause. "Pause the video and say your answer out loud. Count your points." Press pause with your finger; do not wait out a silence.
3. The credited answer. In the mark scheme's own words, one point per sentence, so the drawing changes on each point.
4. The lost mark. The error the examiner report names, stated as plainly as possible.

Worked example: temperature and rate, four marks

Here is the script for the top row of the tally, written to be kept word for word.

Question. Explain why increasing the temperature increases the rate of reaction. Four marks. Pause the video and answer out loud.Here is the answer. At a higher temperature, the particles have more kinetic energy, so they move faster. They collide more frequently. A greater proportion of the collisions have energy equal to or greater than the activation energy. So there are more successful collisions per second, and the rate increases.The mark most people lose: writing "more collisions" without saying more frequent, or per second. Over the whole reaction, the number of collisions is not the point. How often they happen is.One more trap. Temperature does not lower the activation energy. That is what a catalyst does, and it is the next chapter.

That is about 120 words, so close to 50 seconds at 150 spoken words a minute. On screen: two boxes of particles side by side, the hot box with longer movement arrows, collisions marked with a flash, and an energy line labelled activation energy that the hot box's particles clear more often.

Check the exact wording against your own board's mark scheme. Some phrase the third point as "more particles have energy greater than the activation energy", and you should use the phrase your examiners credit.

The model answer against the typical answer

For longer questions, such as six-mark practical methods or extended responses, a split scene works better than a single answer. Put a typical answer on the left and the full-mark answer on the right, and narrate the differences point by point. Mark schemes for levelled questions describe what separates each level, and examiner reports often quote examples. Write your own versions based on those descriptions; do not copy a candidate's script into a video you share.

What this video is not

This is not the same as a revision video from your notes, which starts from what you were taught and audits it against the specification. That method is in how to make an exam revision video from your own notes, and it is the better place to start if your notes have gaps. The past-paper video starts from what the examiners ask and how they mark it. The two work well together: one for coverage, one for exam technique.

Nor is it a replacement for doing papers. Watching a credited answer feels like knowing it. Writing it under time, with no prompt, is a different skill, and it is the one the exam tests. A good rhythm is to sit a paper, mark it, add every new lost mark to the relevant chapter, and rebuild only that chapter.

If you have one day and no video, skip production entirely. How to pass an exam in one day is a past-papers-first plan without any video at all.

Checklist before you watch it

• Every chapter starts with a real question type from the tally, with its usual marks.
• Every answer uses the mark scheme's wording, not your textbook's.
• Every chapter ends with an error named in an examiner report, not one you guessed.
• Command words match: "describe" chapters do not explain, "explain" chapters do.
• Numbers, units and equations on screen match the mark scheme exactly.
• Nothing is copied from a candidate's script in an examiner report.

Make it

1. 1

   Download five years of the three documents

   Question papers, mark schemes and examiner reports for one topic, from your exam board's website. Ask your teacher for the newest series if it is not public yet.

2. 2

   Sit one paper under time, then tally

   Mark your own paper honestly, then go through the other years and list each question on the topic with its year, command word and marks. Rank by how often it appears.

3. 3

   Write one chapter per repeat question

   Question and marks, the line 'Pause the video and answer out loud', the answer in mark scheme words, then the lost mark from the examiner report. About 100 to 150 words each.

4. 4

   Paste the script into openCanviz

   Choose Keep my wording so the narration matches the mark scheme exactly, set a five to eight minute target, and pick whiteboard style so particles, graphs and apparatus build as each point is spoken.

5. 5

   Check every label, unit and arrow

   Pause each scene against the mark scheme. A drafted drawing can put a label on the wrong line or drop a unit, and you will memorise what is on screen. Fix it in the scene editor.

6. 6

   Feed every new paper back in

   After each past paper, add the marks you lost to the matching chapter and rebuild only that scene. The video should get harder to watch comfortably as the exam gets closer.

Common questions

Where do I find past papers, mark schemes and examiner reports? On your exam board's website, in the subject's assessment resources section. AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR and Cambridge all publish them. Revision sites mirror many of them, but check you have the right specification code, because old specifications look similar and test different content.

How many years of papers should I use? Four or five for the tally. Fewer and one unusual year skews it; older papers may be from a previous specification. If your course is new, use the specimen papers and the board's sample assessment materials as well.

Can I use papers from a different exam board? For practice, yes, if the content overlaps. For the video, no. The wording that earns credit differs between boards, and the whole point of the chapter is to rehearse your board's wording.

Should I record my own voice? Some students remember their own voice better, and you can replace the generated narration with your own recording. Either works. What matters is that the words are the mark scheme's.

Is it worth sharing with my class? Yes, if every answer is checked against the mark scheme first. A shared revision video with a wrong answer spreads the mistake to everyone who watches it. Free videos carry a watermark, which does not matter for revision.