Methods and apparatuses for discontinuous reception (DRX) for a group of user equipments (UEs). A method of a UE in a wireless communication system includes receiving higher layer parameters and determining DRX ON durations based on the higher layer parameters and reception occasions for physical downlink control channels (PDCCHs) based on the higher layer parameters, wherein a first PDCCH from the PDCCHs provides a downlink control information (DCI) format. The method further includes receiving the first PDCCH in at least one reception occasion from the reception occasions and determining based on an indication in the DCI format, whether to receive a second PDCCH in at least one DRX ON duration from consecutive NDRX DRX ON durations that are after the reception of the first PDCCH, wherein the indication in the DCI format is a bitmap of size NDRX, and NDRX bits in the bitmap are respectively associated with the NDRX DRX ON durations.