This paper presents a moment-curvature method that accounts for the strength deterioration of steel at elevated temperature in estimating the response of steel beams exposed to fire. A modification to the EC4 method is proposed for a better estimation of the temperature distribution in the steel beam supporting a concrete slab. The accuracy of the proposed method is verified by comparing the results with established test results and the nonlinear finite element analysis results. The beam failure criterion based on a maximum strain of 0.02 is proposed to assess the limiting temperature as compared to the traditional criteria that rely on deflection limit or deflection rate. Extensive studies carried out on steel beams with various span lengths, load ratios, beam sizes and loading types show that the proposed failure criterion gives consistent results when compared to nonlinear finite element results.