How should I approach material that I haven't seen before in an exam?

Firstly, it is important to be familiar with the mark scheme in assuring that you know exactly what is expected of you during this examination. It would also be good to establish where you fit within this mark scheme and decide an achievable target to aim for so that the workload is manageable for you. If you understand the learning objectives out of this examination, then it will be easier to deliver exactly what is expected of you. A helpful tool is looking back at past exam papers and also the review conducted by a member of the exam board in terms of how well students generally answered the questions - exam boards such as OCR offer this service on their website. 

Generally, the mark scheme will require several components that examiners are looking for. You should remember that examiners do not spend a lot of time marking your work so you need to clearly tick these boxes for them by opening paragraphs with topic sentences. For example, the overall objective of examining a poem that you have not seen before is to examine your general comprehension skills. When studying a poem, generally the marker will be looking for the student to understand the message of the poem; generally, a well structured and developed argument; and the most important element is the method by the author. To acquire top marks at this level, the examiner is always looking for critical engagement with the text. This is the difference between examining the overall message of the poem at face-level and then unpicking the poem for further clues which may express the author's opinion. For example, when is the time period of the piece? Is this expressed explicitly or is there any details in the text that may allude the time period: e.g. comments on warfare that indicate references to the First World War etc.