Our first bad teacher!

So we are just now dealing with our first bad teacher. I'm thankful that we haven't had one before now, but I am at a loss as to what to do. She is Sidney's 5th grade teacher. I knew coming in that she is strict. That we can handle. But we have found ourselves having TWO hours of homework every night, and she is completely unfair when she grades. For example, Sid had a spelling assignment where she had to put her spelling words into ABC order. When she got the sheet back she had gotten 6 wrong! Not because they were spelled wrong! Not because they weren't in the right order! They were marked wrong because her cursive writing wasn't perfect. I'll be the first to admit that she doesn't have perfect handwriting. But they were legible! It's not like it was so sloppy you couldn't read the words! I was FURIOUS! This wasn't a handwriting assignment. This was a spelling assignment and she spelled everything correctly and put them in the correct order. Example #2... she has two vocabulary words every week that she has to write the definitions for and write meaningful sentences for each word. Chris helped her write her sentences last week and they were both marked wrong for not being meaningful. Isn't meaningful subjective? I can't believe how picky she is being on this work. I am totally fine with strict, but the fact that my daughter is stressed out over 5th grade is a little ridiculous to me! Doesn't 10 seem a little young to be this hard on them? On top of that she is just plain mean, snappy and rude. Sidney is scared to ask questions in class because she is scared to get a rude response. Chris and I have a meeting with her set up for Monday. I'm trying to think of a nice way to say to her to stop being so mean and picky. The last thing I need is to offend her and give her any reason to retaliate against Sidney. Any ideas???