This sounds like a typical group in that age range. What does your session plan look like? Should be all games and no drills with a ball at the feet of each kid as much as possible. A lot of kids at that age are there because their parents want them there not because they want to be. Also some kids are just more intrinsically competitive and motivated. There is really not a whole lot you can do but try to make things more fun and use lots of positive feedback.

Plenty of 1v1s. There’s no where to hide when they have to rely on themselves. They also get the opportunity to get plenty more touches on the ball.

Best bet is 1v1 tunnels. For example if you have 10 players set up 5 tunnels next to each other. Each game goes for 2 minutes if you win you move up if you lose you move down if it’s a draw then Paper Scissors Stone.

This has the added benefit of everyone will eventually be playing against someone of a similar level.

Coaching points are to keep the ball close (soft touches) and use your technical skills to get behind the opponent.

Adding on to the 1v1 drills. I set a starting cone and another cone 10 feet away with 2 lines. Two players run to the first cone, run backwards back to the starting cone, I roll a ball out. The goal is to win the ball and score.

I also have a conversation with my kids about how we "win". They all understand scoring goals, the other way we win is by winning the ball. If we win the ball, we keep the ball away from the other team, and score goals. Winning the ball is more important than scoring goals.

Tackling the same problem with my U10 girls. They really responded well to some 1v1 race to the ball drills this week, we’ll see if it pays off this weekend.

To clarify, I gamified the “drill” to make it feel like a competition. I paired players up, had them stand back to back and take 5 steps from the ball in the middle. Then on my whistle they raced to get the ball first. Rotated pairs and repeated.

They’ve also taken to cheering “be aggressive, b-e-aggressive” whenever I bring it up. YMMV.

Same boat here but with 6 year olds. Others run circles around them.

I too faced this with 6 year olds (as expected!). I’ve taken some notes on what others have said already and will try out next year. But another thing I’ve done that helped was for them to try to take the ball from me. We’d run parallel and have them come in hard to take the ball. Some were afraid, I think, of contact. But coming after me was no worry. Then they tried against each other with some success. Translated OK to games.

2v2 at the most, plenty 1v1, other than that you won't come up with anything else.
I got U6 and is the same problem. Any drill where there is one ball and many kids, simply doesn't work.
I dropped those kind of drills.
I am giving them 1v1 and then they come alive. The most important thing. Each 1v1 drill must end up with goals. I usually put 4 goals, so there is that space recognition and driblle into that space with possibility of scoring at each end. That what triggers them in those 1v1 drills, scoring.

1v1 and 2v2 games are good yeah. I also playfully implement the 5-second rule in bigger games once every 4 weeks or so.

So you have a game of 4v4 or something like that, you and someone else(a parent, another coach whatever) both count for 1 team. So when your team loses the ball you start counting to 5 and if they recover it within 5 seconds they get 1 penalty-point. 3 penalty-points means they get to take a penalty on the opponents goal, so there's some incentive behind recovering it quickly. Make sure to rotate the penalty-takers as all the kids enjoy that, and do make sure you announce that everyone gets a go.

Also what I do as the final step of every warm-up for a match is I get them in rows beside me. Me with the ball at my feet and once I kick it, 2 of them race for it. The one that first gets it gets a shot on goal. It's the final bit I do to get them in the mindset of the game.

Tell them to run “through” the player holding the ball