[senco-forum] a defintion of synthetic phonics

I would really like to pick your brains on how you would describe synthetic phonics in relation to analytic phonics - it's just that when I put it to staff that the focus of literacy teaching had moved from an approach which favoured analytic phonic to one favouring synthetic phonics, they jumped on this saying that all phonics teaching was largely of the synthetic variety. I did point out teaching literacy along the lines of onset and rime was an example of the analytical approach but I flapped. What do you understand by these terms!?