A one-dimensional theory of slender structures with heterogeneous anisotropic materials is presented. It expands Cosserats description of beam kinematics by allowing deformation of the beam cross sections. For that purpose, a Ritz approximation is introduced on the cross-sectional warping field, which defines additional elastic degrees of freedom (finitesection modes) in the 1-D model. This results in an extended set of beam dynamic equations that includes direct measures of both the large global displacement and rotations of a certain reference line, and the small local deformations of the cross sections. Two situations of interest are then studied in which this approach provides a simpler alternative to nonlinear shell models: First, we look at the detailed structural response of thin-walled composite beams with distributed loads. In particular, the case of a composite construction with embedded piezoelectric actuators is considered. Second, this methodology is applied to study the low-frequency response characterization of a thin-walled composite beam. Numerical results are presented in both cases, in which a reduced set of finite-section modes allows a full characterization of the actual 3-D structure within a strictly 1-D framework solution.