Hey!! My school has trials this term, and we're being tested on content we'll be learning right up until the week before... How would you go about doing past papers in this scenario?
If your school has past papers then you should just be doing it.
There's going to be a need to learn and study simultaneously for the 3-4 weeks leading up to the exam. Start getting into past papers ASAP, ensuring that you can handle everything on content that's already been taught. But you're going to have to find a balance.
The problem: You most likely have to study and learn for not just that subject
The resolutions:
1. Everyone messes up with you, so moderation will save you all regardless in the final exam.
2. If maths is the ONLY subject where you're being taught content up to there then you have a bit more breathing room. There's a different benefit in that you should be able to retain information you learnt recently more easily.
Finding the balance between studying and learning new content is going to be a bit rough. Put a small amount of faith into the likelihood of retaining newly learnt content more easily, and make sure you have all the other stuff covered first. Past papers are easy to find (THSC), so just do every single question relevant to your trials (i.e. you will be examined on). If you see some questions that appear as though they may be taught in that one week before the trials, you can consider bookmarking them to go back to later.
The idea is, if you have all of the old stuff covered, you'll feel more at ease and ready to add the new stuff in as well.