one specific method of teaching phonics; rather, it is a family of phonics instruction that includes methods such as synthetic phonics and analytic phonics. They are "systematic" because the letters, and the sounds they relate to, are taught in a specific sequence; as opposed to incidentally or on a 'when-needed' basis. In the United Kingdom, the term "systematic phonics" is "generally understood as synthetic phonics" according to the reading review which was conducted in 2006. Systematic phonics does not include methods such as embedded phonics and phonics mini lessons which are found in the Whole Language approach and the Balanced Literacy approach. Analytic phonics In analytic phonics (sometimes referred to as analytical phonics) practitioners do not teach learners to pronounce sounds "in isolation" as is the practice with Synthetic Phonics. Furthermore, consonant blends (separate, adjacent consonants) are taught as units (e.g., in the word 'shrouds' the shr would be taught as a unit). Some analytic phonics programs (referred to as analogy phonics ) teach learners to break-down words into their common components which are referred to as the "onset" and the "rime". In the word ship, sh is the "onset" and ip is the "rime" (the part starting with the vowel). In other words, analytic phonics teaches the learner to say sh - ip (ship) and sh - op (shop), whereas synthetic phonics teaches the learner to say sh - i - p (ship) and sh - o - p (shop). In analytic phonics, learners are also taught to find the similarities among words (e.g. man, can, tan, fan, and ran), whereas synthetic phonics devotes most of its time to learning the letter/sound relationships (i.e. grapheme/phoneme). Synthetic phonics Synthetic phonics uses the concept of 'synthesising', which means 'putting together' or 'blending'. Simply put, the sounds prompted by the letters are synthesised (put together or blended) to pronounce the word. Common terminology Some common terminology used within this article includes: alphabetic code (in synthetic phonics): The relationship between sounds (phonemes) and the letter/s (graphemes) that represent them are referred to as a "code". For example, the sound ay can be represented in many ways (e.g. cake, may, they, eight, aid, break, etc.). See also: Alphabetic principle decoding skills (in phonics): Without the use of context, to pronounce and read words accurately by using the relationship between the letter(s) and the sounds they represent. (i.e. cat is k - a - t,